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Late Afternoon - Late Fall : Acardi Laboratory | Off the Coast of the Kingdom of Elynnor

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*Blub...* *t-t-t-tap-Blub...* *t-t-t-CLICK-WOOM* As the old, decaying reactor kicked on, a plume of steam erupted from the top of the lab, funneling into a hole in the ceiling of the dungeon before funneling out into the open ocean like a massive volcanic vent.

"~Hey, that one was pretty good!~" -Looks like she's starting to get the hang of it.

..- Looking over at Hera as she carefully pulled her head out of the hole in the top of the laboratory, leading directly to the heat chamber of the reactor, I watched her lean back and take a moment for her eyes to adjust before she set her eyes on me.

"~Did I do this one right?~" Immediately seeing me nod, her expression lit up with pride. "~Haha! At long last!~"

"~Pftt, what do you mean 'at long last', you went from not knowing how electricity works to restarting a fusion reactor in like a week.~"

"~And I STILL don't know what the hell is happening in the lab you literally reconstructed. All I've done is repairs!~"

She seemed a bit annoyed, but just five days ago, I was trying to explain the concept of electricity to her while simultaneously attempting to explain why I was doing certain things when repairing an old fusion reactor.

-It's a process...- "~You'll get there eventually, I promise.

~" But I was honestly quite proud. "~You also just call them repairs, but you couldn't have done them if you didn't know how the whole system worked. ~"

"~Well, when I had to ask for a tutorial on every step of the process for the last two labs, of course I'd know now.~" Finally walking toward the edge of the lab's roof and hopping off, we swam toward the vehicle bay and made our way inside. *tsss-blub*

"Welcome.. aboard."

It had been just under six days since I brought Hera to the Acardi lab off the coast of Siratha at that point, but we nearly couldn't have been farther from it.

Over the course of the last several days, we traveled all around the Death's Gape following the directions of my OOM to find three other, much older abandoned laboratories with the goal of bringing them all back online.

According to the main lab, the one in Siratha, they were the laboratories with subaquatic and subsurface mapping facilities.

The issue was, while we only needed to power three of them, we had to go through and repair everything incredibly thoroughly, whether it was fixing a cable that led to an outlet in the cafeteria or the central fusion reactor, which, given their comparably poor build quality, was more than a little time-consuming.

But after several days, we were almost done.

All we had left was to connect the final lab to the Relay Pylon in the middle of the Gape and return to the main lab to check if the AI could communicate with the other facilities.

-After that, we should be able to look at a map of the bottom and figure out if Jormungandr could really be the source of that patch of divinity near Nkremo. ..-

My thought was, because of how massive he was, with a subterranean map, we should be able to see where he had previously been, and in turn, see if he could've been the one that the oracle stemmed from.

However, regardless of whether he was really the source of it or not, I planned to use these facilities to keep my eyes on him, just as I was going to do the Holy Kingdom with satellites. -It's time I start using some tech to my advantage...-

But I can't lie, the state of the other laboratories had me worried.

*Blub-Blub* While we waited for the old vehicle bay to drain, Hera sat down and gave me an odd look. "~Why were all these labs so.. inferior compared to the one you rebuilt, by the way? Didn't you get that reactor from an Acardi wreckage?~"

I gently nodded as the water drained past my head.

"These labs are much, much older. The reactor I built was from a wreckage around the time you were captured, and by the looks of it, the lab was similar.

" *Flash* Quickly changing to our humanoid forms, we made our way out of the vehicle bay and into the dirty, dilapidated hallway of the lab.

"If I had to guess, these labs predate that by quite a margin.

.." -This was probably built at a similar point in time to the crawler I found. ..-

"Is that so..." Glancing around, she looked at the dim, flickering lights with a mix of curiosity and worry. "Did their technology really advance that fast? It couldn't have been more than two hundred years before I got caught that they arrived."

*Creak-THUD* Using my aura to forcefully rip open a heavily rusted door, we walked into a large control room with a computer terminal. "Well, it could have been the advancement of runes and magic, but some part of me thinks it's more likely that it was the simple allocation of investment."

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"Investment?" She curiously tilted her head as I walked up to a computer, and plugged in my OOM.

"If they could travel between stars, it's probably more likely that these old labs were from them deciding whether this planet was worth investing in.

Whether the knowledge or resources of this planet were worth their time and effort.

.." *Click-Click-Beep* "But then again, I'm sure the advancement of knowledge around mana helped. .."

Quickly bouncing through several windows before editing a few numbers, I pressed a button that caused the monitor to go dark and my OOM's screen to flicker. *Clip* Hastily unplugging it, I got up and walked to the back of the room while Hera watched.

"You seem oddly.. used to using technology like this..." Hera spoke with a genuine curiosity, untainted by skepticism. "Have you really spent that much time studying the Acardi?"

Unsure how to respond, I held my OOM up to a scanner before letting the massive door unlock itself and open with a hiss. *tssss* "I doubt you'd believe me."

Leaning up against the desk while I walked into the abnormal dark purple room, lit by a faint blue glow, she spoke warmly. "I'd believe anything you tell me. Be it truth or lie."

Injecting a bit of mana into an absolutely pristine rune, a metal sphere, completely coated with microscopic runes popped up out of the glowing pedestal. *Tap* Gently grabbing it, I turned to walk back out, and caught Hera's gaze.

"Hah..." I continued somewhat jokingly. "If I told you it had to do with one of my past lives, would you believe me?"

Her expression immediately turned smug. "I'm gonna make fun of you till the end of time if you used to be one of the Acardi."

But I quickly waved her off with a smile. "As if. If I had a life like that, I wouldn't have had to ask you what they look like."

"Hmm... That's fair." Following me back into the hall, we walked in silence for a moment before she poked her head in again. "Are you not going to tell me?"

Having fallen deep into thought, my expression had darkened, but I tried to lighten it as I responded. "I'll tell you everything eventually. This just isn't the time, nor place for it."

Giving me an odd look for a moment, her expression warmed. "Do you want to tell your mother first?"

But I shook my head without hesitation. "I'm still afraid of telling her. As for you..." Pausing to look her in the eyes for a moment, I wanted to sigh. -Why am I even nervous about telling her...- "I just want to be able to explain it without being distracted..."

Walking out into the docking bay, we quickly changed forms again before making our way to to the surface and heading to the center of the Gape.

For the next hour, we barely spoke at all. Hera gave me a moment to sort my thoughts, and I gave her a moment to sort hers.

It wasn't until we swam down to the massive glowing obelisk in the middle of the ocean that Hera spoke up again, this time changing the subject. "~So, this should be the last one, right?~"

Looking down at the tiny metal ball isolated from the elements by countless barriers, I nodded. "~We should be able to return after getting this one connected.~"

The thing I was holding was the container for the other entangled electron used to communicate between laboratories.

It was why the room I got it from was so pristine compared to the rest of the lab.

-It was probably built around the time of the main lab, if not even later.

..- *Hummmmm* Hearing a faint hum begin filling the water, Hera and I continued down before a colossal obelisk, at least half a kilometer wide and ten kilometers tall started revealing itself with the bright glow of radiation.

-Let's see if I can find the right bay.. .-

Pulling out my OOM, also protected from the water by my aura, I jumped through several menu's before finding a map of the obelisk and searching for the bay number of the lab that I saw while on the computer.

-Hmm... 1.. 7.. 2.. 8.. 4...- "~There it is.

..~" Mumbling as I found it, I immediately started swimming deeper toward the bottom, at a depth of about 170 kilometers, the deepest I had ever been.

"~By the way...~" Looking down into the dark water, Hera spoke curiously. "~Why is the bottom around here all ice, yet it flows like water?~"

Eventually finding the right bay, I used some aura to create a big vacuum pocket and simulate a vehicle docking to open the locks before carefully setting the entangled electrons container inside.

*Snap-Blub* Releasing the bubble as the bay closed, I finally responded to Hera.

"~It's because of the pressure down here. ~"

"~What? It's that strong?~"

I wanted to scoff seeing her genuine surprise. "~Do you not realize that like, a block of unstrengthened metal would be crushed into a sphere at this depth?~" -Even I don't understand how the water at this depth can remain liquid...- Even as a liquid, it was far denser than normal ice.

But Hera didn't seem to even notice. "~I know it's dense, but how could the pressure reform metal?~"

-Oh boy...- Hindsight, a part of me thinks she was saying it just to distract me, to get my mind off the things I was dwelling on by getting me to rant about something I was passionate about.

But whether it was her goal or not, it worked.

And looking back, I couldn't be more thankful for it.

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