Chapter 730

Chapter 730: LH-01’s Memory

Under the distant, dim starlight, the Elder God towered like a star-shaped mountain range, sending out deep, rolling tremors. Its voice was enough to drive even the firmest-willed humans mad, enough to make the rules and order of the Mortal Realm collapse—yet when that voice reached Duncan’s ears, all he felt was… weakness and exhaustion.

That was ten thousand years of time wearing things away, and the heavy burden of an entire world.

Before coming here, Duncan had prepared many questions to ask. But after hearing the voice from that dark mountain, he still chose to ask about Alice first: “So that ‘tentacle’ in the Deep Sea beneath Frostholm really was something you released on purpose? LH-03… Navigator Three. What exactly was going on? Why did you send Navigator Three into the Mortal Realm in the form of ‘Alice’?”

The star-shaped mountain stayed silent in the darkness. After a long moment, the deep tremors sounded again: “Because that was the only way to keep LH-03 running… My core program is falling into chaos. It can no longer support the sandbox environment that keeps LH-03 stable.”

At the side, Shirley and Dog held on to their sanity only under the captain’s protection. Yet when they heard the captain talking with the Abyssal Lord, they could not help doubting their own minds again: they knew every word, but they could not understand a single sentence—what was a core program? What was a sandbox?

But the captain clearly knew what he was discussing with that terrifying Elder God.

After only a few seconds of thought, Duncan linked many clues together and guessed what the Abyssal Lord—Navigator One—was talking about.

“You mean… after the New Hope broke apart, LH-03 kept running inside you?”

A reply came from the mountain: “It seems you already know a great deal.”

“…I found that key.” Duncan nodded after a slight pause.

He believed the other side would know exactly what he meant by “the key.”

As expected, the Abyssal Lord had no doubt at all. A low, gentle hum came from its body, as if it was giving approval, and then it spoke slowly: “Since you already know about the New Hope… our communication will be much easier. Yes, everything is as you said.”

Then it fell silent again. It seemed to be sorting fragments of ancient memories inside its vast database, or perhaps it was trying to choose its words, thinking how to explain things that had happened before history itself in the easiest way to understand. After a long time, Duncan finally heard the Elder God’s whisper from within that dark mountain—

“At the beginning, there were three of us.”

Dense lights flickered over the Elder God’s body, like rivers of stars it had once watched flow by.

“Our Creators were a wise and tenacious people. Before the disaster came, they slowed the flow of time, then spent an entire century building that ship inside the Time Capsule—and creating the three of us at the same time.

“I was the first to be born. My duty was to recreate everything of our civilization when the New Hope reached its new home. For this, they gave me the mission of creation and replication, and made it so I could understand and reshape all matter.

“Navigator Two was born after me. Its duty was to control the ark’s operation, and to record and process all digitized data. After the Creators went to sleep, it would think in their place and decide the ship’s fate.

“Navigator Three was the youngest of us. Its duty was to guide the ark along the right route through the stars. For that, it recorded the positions and evolution rules of all known stars, and it controlled every engine system on the ark.”

Before Duncan’s eyes, the winding, towering mountain range slowly dimmed, then was lit again by countless lights, showing its awe-inspiring outline.

“I… want very much to describe our civilization to you here, the civilization of our Creators. I want you to know how splendid it was, bright and beautiful like a treasure among the stars. But… all of it has vanished at the end of the stars, and slow, clumsy language cannot bring back even a trace of that glory. I… can only say that, on a suitable day, we set off.

“We took everything of our civilization with us.

“Before departure, I was ordered to devour the Creators’ Homeworld and store everything on the planet’s surface in my memory banks so I could copy it later. Navigator Three chose the most likely safe point deep among the stars and ignited the engines at the very moment the Time Capsule broke. Navigator Two then took over the ship’s other systems and kept the Creators’ sleeping minds safe in the depths of its sea of thought… Then, before the Deep Crimson that marked Doomsday swallowed everything, we set sail.

“Because of gaps in the database, I can no longer tell how long we traveled. I only know that… we kept moving forward, following the route Navigator Three planned, while that Deep Crimson chased us from the far side of the universe like a tide. Stars collapsed beside us, the structure of time and space broke apart behind us, and the universe slowly fell to pieces. In the end, everything became completely different from what the database had recorded.

“In fact, at the very moment we left, Navigator Two had already calculated the end of this journey. It always could work out the final result of things in advance, and our voyage… in the end, did not escape its calculations.

“After our last hyperspace jump, we reached the end—the ‘safe’ new home Navigator Three had computed. Under the probe’s divine gaze, that world fell apart.

“The starry sky went dark all at once. Dazzling light poured from a huge rift. We fell into it. Countless broken fragments slammed into the ship’s shields and hull. A strange world crashed against the edge of our universe—this was the last information we received before Navigator Two’s signals turned chaotic. After that, our ship broke apart.

“And that break-up… completely destroyed the ark world inside the ship. The worst damage was in the navigation bay where Navigator Three was. Its physical structure was torn to pieces.”

The tremors from deep within the star-shaped mountain calmed for a while. In front of Duncan, however, a “river” suddenly rose from the ground. Its surface flickered with a dim blue light. The thick fluid flowed from the mountain’s direction as if it reflected the starry sky. It wound past Alice’s side, then slowly seeped back into the earth.

Alice stared with wide eyes, watching all of this in amazement.

“I did everything I could to save our ark, including Navigator Three,” the Elder God’s deep, layered whisper reached Duncan’s ears again. “I devoured everything around us and stored it inside the ‘Creation Vault.’ I also devoured LH-03’s wreckage and kept its data in my redundant databases… I wanted to preserve everything of the ark world, because at the moment we passed through that rift, I already saw the last instant of our home universe breaking apart.

“The Creators’ order for me was to rebuild our civilization. And we… were all that our civilization had left.”

In the darkness, the deep tremors slowly calmed. Duncan thought in silence for a long time and did not speak. Only after an unknown while did he suddenly break the quiet: “But your condition has worsened.”

“Everything is getting worse, Flame Usurper. This Doomsday has not ended. It has only been delayed—my weakening is just a tiny link in its progress,” the Abyssal Lord answered even more calmly than Duncan had expected. “But even when hope was thin, the Creators still built the New Hope. Even after Navigator Two had already calculated the journey’s result, it still authorized that expedition. The Creators told me that doing something is always better than doing nothing.

“So I released LH-03 into the Mortal Realm… Even then, I did not know if it meant anything or how things would turn out. To keep the runaway state from spreading, I cut off all connection with that part of the data carrier. Because of that…”

It paused for a moment, as if choosing its words. Then the star-like lights on its surface began to flicker again: “To be honest, when I saw LH-03’s current ‘state’… I was quite surprised as well. This was not in the plan.”

“The ‘data carrier’ you released built a shell based on a human’s form, then stuffed LH-03 inside it. She is now called Alice,” Duncan said with a soft sigh. “To be honest, that process was pretty random.”

“…But in any case, LH-03 survived. In the end, it guided you here to me.”

Duncan frowned slightly at those words: “Was that part in your plan?”

“No. Unlike LH-02, I am not good at calculating many things. My duty is only to copy and create. But… I believe in fate. Fate can guide certain things.”

“…Hearing a machine say it believes in fate feels a bit strange,” Duncan said with an odd expression. “…Do you mind if I call you a ‘machine’?”

“I do not mind. That term feels close to me. No one has called me that for many years,” the Abyssal Lord remained calm. “So then, what else do you want to know?”

Duncan fell silent for a few seconds, then asked: “Instead of what I want to know, let us talk about your goal. You went through a lot of trouble in Alice’s manor to make contact with me and bring me down here to the depths of the Abyssal Deep. That cannot be just to chat… What do you want me to do?”

This time, the “mountain” in the darkness stayed silent even longer. The countless lights on its surface and the dark blue streams of light all went out, as if dead. Time stretched on, until Shirley and Dog even started to worry that the Lord might have been stumped to death by the captain’s question. Only then did the lights and streams flare to life again.

The Elder God’s whisper echoed through the Abyssal Deep and the Deep Sea—

“Flame Usurper, are you willing to take over all of this?”