Page 293

Late Morning - Mid Winter : Atlas, Bahamut

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*CLICK* The sound of every emergency switch in the device opening simultaneously made my whole body tense up as if I had jumped in a pool of freezing water.

-WAIT WHAT?!- *VWOOOM* Slamming a huge mass of mana into it, I tried to freeze everything in place, and jumped into the void without hesitation. *Vwoop*

As a listless sensation filled my body, I felt the immense pressure against my mana within the device ease. -Holy shit...- Slowly easing the rigidity of my mana, things tried to start flowing again; however, it was now essentially in slow motion. -That was really close...-

Finally getting things under control again, I forced the emergency switches closed once more and made sure to hold them all in place before getting ready to leave the void again, but as I went to create another gate, I noticed the surrounding space mana trying to force its way through my aura toward the device.

-Huh?- It was like it was being sucked in by a vacuum. -Is the rune sucking it in?-

*Vwoom* Immediately isolating the rune, the space mana piercing into my aura rebounded out as if it were sprung by a trampoline and sent a ripple out into the void.

But I paid it no mind and simply recreated the rune in an identical copper plate and moved it to the edge of my aura. -Last I checked, space mana would just ignore runes... So why is it attracted to this one?-

In my countless previous experiments, space mana within the void didn't even remotely care about runes that didn't involve space mana, so I couldn't deny that seeing it suddenly react for seemingly no reason raised more than just confusion.

-The only thing different about this rune is its size, is it not? -

Finally letting space mana flow into the rune I created, I watched it begin navigating the channels of the maze-like rune while trying to eat the copper base before simply turning stagnant once enough mana flowed into it to fill it up.

To put it bluntly, it did nothing. -Huh? Is it not the rune?-

Undoing the barrier I put up around the Acardi artifact, I watched the space mana once again try to force its way through my aura. -W..why is it doing that?-

But while it was quite a confusing problem, it didn't take me long to figure out what it was.

Attraction to energy.

Ever since I first discovered the void, I had spent endless hours within it, experimenting and hypothesizing anything my mind could conjure up, but one of the first things I ever discovered was its ability to devour essentially anything.

At the time, I wasn't sure why or how it did that, but after enough experimenting, I came to the conclusion that it was for energy of some kind.

The issue was that the only observable reaction of this 'desire' was its faint change in color once it ate a considerable amount of matter. -But.. could its attraction here be similar?-

Allowing a tiny amount of space mana to enter the Acardi device, I moved my mana with it and watched it flow straight through the copper plate without regard for the rune and enter the antimatter battery before immediately flowing through the main cable leading to the reactor, completely ignoring the antimatter it passed by.

-What the.. its not trying to eat anything? -

Continuing to watch it closely, it quickly made it to the main chamber of the reactor, where the antimatter was being destroyed, but the moment it entered the chamber, the space mana suddenly disappeared. -H..huh? What happened to it?-

Trying it again with another clump of mana, I watched the exact same thing happen again.. and again.

Before I knew it, hours began ticking by without me even realizing it, and I sank further and further into an abyss of thoughts, but after a while, my eyes were met with a bright light.

-Huh?- Finally being pulled out of my thoughts for a moment, I looked down to see the Acardi device brightly glowing white like a huge LED.

-Oh shit, I zoned out... Nothing bad happened, did it?

- I had gotten so enraptured by the phenomena of the space mana that I had nearly forgotten why I was in the void in the first place.

But thankfully, the device was alright. -It looks like it's trying to boot something, though... I should probably leave the void to focus on it again...-

But as I started readying my mana to leave, I felt something odd in my gut, a sensation I couldn't pinpoint the source of.

It was uncertainty. -But.. why?-

Staring out into the void, I watched as distant streaks of colors flowed and collided, swirling around each other and creating countless other colors before dissipating, and looked in another direction to see a simple black band of space mana, devoid of color entirely.

Such sights were normal, but for whatever reason, at that moment, I doubted myself.

"Haah..." -But who am I kidding...- The void was an abyss of nothing but space mana, a reality where matter wasn't allowed to exist. -Maybe I've finally started succumbing to madness...-

Finally getting my mana ready, I closed my eyes and shook my head before promptly engulfing myself with a gate. -I can play with space mana later, so for now, I'll just focus on this thing...-

*vwoop* Looking down at the artifact as I jumped through the gate, the bright white 'screen' instantly showed a black logo, a familiar insignia I had seen in every Acardi structure I had been to. -It's slightly different, though... It looks like there is the Acardi symbol for '3' in its center...-

As the gate dissipated around me, I kept a close eye on the artifact, but before long, its voice met my ears again.

"Detached devices detected. Unable to establish connection." From what I could tell, it was still trying to connect to the devices whose switches I was forcing closed. "Booting in safe mode."

-Hoh? Is it just a mini computer?- Watching the screen as it started booting, countless strings of text blasted across it before it eventually turned off and on once more, this time the wall of text being replaced by a single line. 'Attempting Connection to Local Relay'.

But after waiting for it to fail to connect, I was presented with something I didn't expect.

"Please move to a place with a clear view of the sky in order to establish an emergency connection."

"Huh?" It caught me a little off guard, but out of curiosity, I did exactly as it asked and walked out to the back of the estate.

But the device didn't wait for me to get more than a few steps out the back door. "Satellite detected, establishing connection."

-Satellite?- Almost immediately, a thin red beam shot out from the artifact and stretched into the sky. -How did it even find it?-

"Connection was unable to be established. Attempting other Satellites." The beam then proceeded to switch directions well over a hundred times, each time to a different section of the sky before eventually speaking again. "Functional satellite detected. Establishing a temporary server." *Ding!*

Hearing the device beep at me, I looked down to see the Acardi insignia I was familiar with, with text below it reading 'Sector 3'. -Ah, so that's what the other insignia was for...-

As the text on the screen disappeared, the voice returned. "Connection to local devices not available. Unable to load existing data. Attempting creation of new data."

The beam once again bounced around the sky like a LIDAR before finally returning to its original direction and bouncing around again, however, this time on a much smaller scale. -Is it trying to bounce the laser off the satellite?-

Looking up in the direction of the beam again, I tried to focus my eyes on it, but there was nothing. The bright blue sky was simply too opaque. -Maybe I'll be able to see it at night...-

*Beep* "Basic data completed." Turning back to the artifact, I saw that the back side of the artifact had darkened, and the front displayed a simple panel that read, 'Please insert mana into mana authorization module to register ownership.'

*Vwoom* Immediately doing as instructed, the white panel turned green, and the whole device lit up white again.

*Beep* "Login Successful." The voice suddenly became more human as it spoke again.

"Welcome to Div-4856 local network #81421.

" *Ding!* The blank white screen transformed into a menu that generally resembled the one I saw in the crawler as a melodious noise met my ears, but unlike the one in the crawler, not only was almost every tab greyed out, but the names were also quite peculiar.

-'Satellite Map', 'Mothership Status', 'Ship Summon'...- The more I read them, the more I had to reconsider what the device was. -'Orbital Cannon Targeting *authorization required*', 'Weapon Requests', 'Emergency Beacon', and even 'Area Scan'...-

But among everything the menu displayed, what caught my attention the most wasn't any of the tabs.

. it was the name of a statistic in the corner of the screen.

"Loon orb free laking? What?" I tried to sound it out in the Acardi language, but it still didn't ring a bell. -Is it not meant to be a single word?-

Trying to split it up, I cross-referenced countless words I had memorized from the laboratory's translation dictionary, but they continually didn't make sense.

However, after a moment, I managed to figure out part of it. "Ping?" -Is it supposed to display the ping to the server?-

Quickly noticing one of the tabs labeled 'Latency' and thinking it may be related, I tapped it and immediately had a large but barely visible holographic display appear in front of my face. -Woah...-

It caught me a little off guard but displayed a large sphere with a small triangle on its surface that had exactly five white dots spread out over it.

Unsure what I was looking at, I glanced down at the screen again and saw a column of seven items, each with different names, and tapped the top one out of curiosity.

*Beep* Almost instantly, a tiny panel appeared next to the triangle in the hologram that displayed, 'Host'.

-Ah.. is the triangle me? That must mean the other dots are the satellites.

..- Quickly tapping through the other items in the menu, the laser reappeared and darted around the sky before the hologram updated and displayed the names of each of the dots, which were all followed by a few lines of long numbers.

-Interesting, so these numbers must reference something about the connection to each satellite. ..-

But while it was cool, it meant nothing to me.

However, the final item on the list didn't have a name as bland as 'Satellite - 5920'.

*Beep* "Solar Relay out of reach. Unable to establish a connection."

-Solar Relay?- My curiosity instantly shot through the roof. -Wait a minute.. could it mean...- Looking to the horizon, I smiled and leapt into the air.

*psh-FWOOOSH* Blasting into the air with simple thruster magic, I climbed into the upper atmosphere until the curvature of the planet became more and more apparent until, finally, over the horizon, a massive glowing object became visible.

It was the moon.

*Beep* "Solar Relay detected. Attempting connection."

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