The Path of Ascension Chapter 440

Chapter 440

 

Having a seeker point out this world as being high value, Matt had been expecting… More.

He wasn’t sure how, but he felt thoroughly underwhelmed by the Tier 8 world. It wasn’t that Tier 8 worlds couldn’t have good things; even lower-Tier items that were truly unique could sell for a Tier 40 price in settled space, theoretically. But that sense of something missing set the tone for Matt.

When they arrived in the world’s real space, Matt immediately spread his perception.

Quickly scanning the surroundings, Matt found it ordinary.

It was a decent enough world with a smattering of Natural Treasures, along with a good amount of rare and valuable materials. He even sensed a strange realm that he was looking forward to exploring.

He had expected something slightly better with the readings both seeker Talents gave off, but the find wasn’t all bad.

Stepping forward, Matt went to inspect a massive natural crystal that was nearly thirty feet tall, with another fifteen feet buried underground.

It wasn’t anything special, but it was cool, and he was sorely tempted to grab it just because it was fascinating to see it fully intact. Instead, he took a couple really thorough scans and moved onto the next thing that caught his interest.

Sadly, most of the Natural Treasures were known commodities, and none were especially rare.

Even the strange realm was barely half-formed and would be destroyed if any of them tried to enter it, as they were magnitudes stronger than it, so they didn’t even get to investigate.

That left all of them baffled.

Matt thought he was alone in his disappointment, but the rest of the crew were clearly just as confused.

Finally, Matt stepped back to the Unsparing to see both seekers standing next to the navigator of the ship, surrounded by everyone not on the harvesting teams.

“There has to be something more here. You just haven’t found it yet.”

Lura’s words were clipped, but even the normally jolly Magnus was solemnly agreeing.

The navigator, upon feeling Matt’s arrival, turned to him, as if Matt would obviously side with him.

Instead, Matt just asked for clarification. “What’s the issue?”

The navigator sighed. “The seekers are being seekers. Their divinations weren’t perfect, which only idiots expect, but instead of just accepting that they made a mistake, they are, as usual, doubling down and refusing to admit they had a dud. This happens every voyage at least once, and they can never admit it. I’ve been part of crews that have torn worlds to pieces trying to find what isn’t there. Normally, I’d be all for looking around longer, but with the oncoming wave of other explorers, we need to move on.”

Matt looked at the two seekers and raised a questioning eyebrow.

Lura flatly returned his gaze, but Magnus replied with a gesture between the two. “And we can both admit that does sometimes happen. I’ve been wrong before. I can admit that, but my Talent definitely felt something valuable and so did Lura’s. Her non-boosted divination might be weaker, but it’s sure there is something still here, and I agree with the results. If we can spare the mana, I’m willing to sacrifice a chicken and see if I can get more accurate information.”

When Matt didn’t immediately respond, he added, “Chickens are good for spot searches, but I don’t have too much fine-grained control. I also won’t need quite as much mana, as it’s a more localized search.”

Matt shrugged. “Go for it. I can widen my Concept a bit, and if everyone donates some mana, we won’t even be slowed down.”

The navigator looked like he wanted to argue, but finally nodded his acceptance.

Liz and Allie returned just a few moments later, leaving Matt to explain what was wrong while they waited for Magnus to sacrifice a chicken and read its entrails.

However, contrary to everyone’s expectations, the reading he got said that they were practically on top of the prize.

That revelation caused them to reevaluate each and every item they had gathered, costing them hours even with everyone’s perceptions nearing Tier 30 speeds, but nothing seemed amiss.

Matt was willing to cut his losses and leave, but both Rah and Zack felt there was a reason to stay, so they tried again.

Lura tried her own additional fully-empowered divination, but her results once more reported they were close to the reward.

Trusting both their guts and Rah and Zack’s, everyone threw out ideas as they waited for Matt’s Concept to refill the crew so they could refill the ship’s stores to at least fifty percent before they left.

That only gave them about three hours until they were scheduled to leave, which left them with nothing better to do than guess widely at what the Talents could possibly be targeting as ‘valuable’ that they also couldn’t find.

While they were sitting there, their navigator even started doing deep space scans just in case something was hiding in the outer system. There were three Tier 3 gas giants and a small asteroid belt.

Normally, an exploration team would clear all of those other worlds, but without their additional delay, they wouldn’t have bothered. Being Tier 30 meant their harvesting crew could move exceptionally fast, but that still normally added days, if not weeks, to the exploration time, and they didn’t want to let others catch up during that period.

“Is there anything near the core? I have heard of a few Natural Treasures that like to form near there and are super valuable.” Allie was falling over in her chair, but had been steadily throwing out guesses trying to stumble onto something.

Matt once more spread his spiritual perception, pushing through the physical material of the planet, slowly but surely inspecting the depths along with Rah and Liz, who had both also checked.

It took several minutes to dig through that much material, but they all shook their heads when they were done, Liz even going as far as to check the moon in the same fashion.

“Nothing?”

Upon getting another negative, Allie sighed and let herself half melt out of her chair and onto the floor.

“What about another world’s core?”

They were too far to reach the other worlds with their spiritual sense, so they all looked to the navigator, who dutifully turned the ship’s scanners to inspect the more distant planet’s and look for any unusual fluctuations that might indicate a hidden… something.

Liz sighed at the action. “That feels useless unless we want to teleport out there ourselves, but that feels unlikely to be worth our time if it’s just a Natural Treasure. It would have to be stupidly valuable to be worth that level of effort.”

The navigator’s reply killed even that hope.

“No readings that might indicate that at all, but I can keep scanning if you want.”

Liz just shook her head and Matt idly watched as they instead started gathering passive information about the system, looking for any anomalies.

“What about if—” Allie once more threw out an even more outlandish idea.

They only had half an hour left when the navigator made a small noise that got everyone’s attention.

“Huh.”

Allie snapped upright, but Aster beat her to the question as she appeared next to the navigator and looked over his shoulder. “What is huh?”

The navigator tapped the reading in question. “There are other essence signatures in this universe. Or that is what the readings indicate. It isn’t that unusual for a rogue asteroid to have enough essence that once it leaves the local star system and enters a new one, where it lands on a celestial body and begins to multiply. Buttt—”

The navigator’s final word was drawn out, and the captain, whose job was to run the ship when they weren’t there, finished as he inspected the reading. “That’s unlikely to happen in four systems. Start focused scans of the area the other worlds are and let me know what you see.”

Matt copied the files and gave it to his [AI] to analyze, throwing his entire mana generation into the spell and waiting, hoping to brute force something.

The first thing his [AI] noticed was that the recordings were probably correct.

Some asteroid or the like had passed from one world, most likely the first world in this universe to have enough life that mana condensed into essence, and through two others and this world just to arrive at a third system, merely nine light years from them.

None of which made sense for a simple asteroid. The chances that such a rogue rock would pass through not one but three worlds was incredibly suspicious and reeked of cultivators’ interference.

That news immediately perked up both of their seekers, but didn’t actually answer their question.

The captain said what everything was thinking. “So our prize might really be right underneath us.”

After scanning the system another time and sending the information for everyone to look through, it was eventually Liz who pointed out an asteroid that was circling the world near them. It was slightly larger than normal, as well as being more densely compacted, which was unusual for a body its size. But what Liz noticed was how it was in a perfectly stable orbit.

It wasn’t a good orbit or even a close to stable orbit, with a small drift one way or the other. It was perfect. In a settled system that wouldn’t be too unusual, but in a world that was possibly essence seeded by another civilization, it was an anomaly.

World seeding went in and out of style as time progressed, but it had been out of style for a while as explorers fell out of the habit of slinging an essence-laden rock into deep space to ensure it arrived at a nearby star system, where it could crash land and start multiplying. The argument was that it ensured more worlds would be there to explore in the future, but the time frames were so insanely long that few bothered with the tradition.

Eventually, such an action would form a new world in chaotic space, but that didn’t really help explorers who would be speed-limited in real space. Few would bother to explore more than one world in a single universe, rather risking more exploration of chaotic space than needing to backtrack to a single node in real space.

Spreading his spiritual perception past the first few feet of surface layers of the unusually dense asteroid, Matt wasn’t that surprised when he started to find runes engraved inside.

It was a spaceship.

At least, sort of a spaceship.

By definition, it was a ship that traveled through space, but it was the crudest thing Matt had ever seen.

The technology level was abysmal.

The runes weren’t ones that Matt knew, but even from a scan of them, he could easily see they were mana-inefficient, with mixed and muddled effects.

Allie teleported herself and Aster inside the center, where the actual livable portion of the ship was, leaving everyone else to look to Matt who cast [Portal], dropping them off right next to the duo.

The rest of the crew’s spiritual sense surrounded them, but as if by some tacit understanding, they didn’t follow, despite being of a higher Tier than the seven of them.

Aster grinned at Matt’s arrival. “Oh, this is so cool. Lost technology! This is worth a fortune!”

That seemed to be the general reception to the find, and Matt could feel the rest of the crew already celebrating and congratulating the seekers for being correct this time. A few even went as far as to dig into their personal stashes of luxury foods and drinks to celebrate.

Ancient technology was, as Matt well knew, rarely important from a technological advancement standpoint. But the informational value was worth a fortune to academies, historians, the imperial government, and anyone who might want to try and update the technology.

The latter rarely paid off in any big way, but ancient suspected Talent technology had been recreated with the Realm’s current scientific understanding more than a few times, making the ship a possible fortune to the right buyer.

Given the level of tech, Matt doubted anyone would find useful technology from the ship, but it was a historical treasure trove, which was its own separate but equally profitable market.

Liz picked up a stone plate and seven pronged fork from a careful pile near the residue of a long-decayed wooden table. Or, what Matt suspected had been a wooden table, given what microscopic details he could see remaining.

“Only soft metals. This might be a world’s first attempt at reaching space.”

Allie leaned over and asked, “Doesn’t that imply the original civilization originated in that higher-Tier world nearby?”

Matt frowned as something felt wrong to him about the whole situation, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

He was staring at the cutlery when Aster asked, “Why is this place built like a normal room?”

Everyone looked to Aster, but Matt saw Zack instantly understand and start his own second perusal of their soundings.

Gesturing, Aster urged everyone else to reevaluate. “This is a normal room. Chairs table, stoneware for food. A pretty normal looking fork, except it’s got way too many prongs, but none of that makes sense. This is a rudimentary spaceship. I can’t see any artificial gravity mechanics or what might be artificial gravity devices. So why did they build this like we would expect, with stable directional gravity when this place doesn’t have that. I don’t even see the residue of things to hold stuff like the plate down. Even if the people who made this were dumb, which I doubt given they managed this, they should have figured out that low to no gravity needs special living requirements before building this. Unless this is somehow the first ever built ship.”

Matt agreed with Aster, but offered his own suggestion, trying to kickstart a bright idea. “Anyone over Tier 5 would have had their own Concept. This asteroid is mainly made out of Tier 6 materials. Let’s assume it was at least Tier 3 or below when it was launched, and it’s been here long enough to be passively Tiered up by the planet below, so it looks like any other rock. While it’s risky to travel without shields, this much material between the inside and outside is safe enough if you are only traveling between worlds in a single universe. It’s also possible the people who flew this had gravity-faking Concept abilities like we have telekinesis.”

Zack disagreed, as he carefully inspected what Matt was pretty sure was a light-amplifying rune set in a basin that Matt couldn’t quite figure out the use of. “Possible, but unlikely. I don’t think this place was ever lived in actually. It’s too clean and sterile. Minimal human habitation signs. There are only a few spots discolored by human produced oils. It gives me more evacuation pod vibes than anything else. One massive room with shelves containing food residue, cots, and what I think is equipment to signal for help. I don’t think anyone has ever lived here, which is why this place feels so strange.”

Matt looked the ship over with a different eye and found what Zack said to be plausible.

Liz raised her own question. “What about the gravity, though? Or lack thereof. Surely they didn’t expect to be orbiting around a habitable planet close enough to rely on its gravity for direction. Not with this level of tech at least.”

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Susanne went over to one of the locked cupboards and pulled out some of the strangely wide cups which were still neatly packed away. Next to it was an area that looked like it might have been used to store water, with magically joined together walls and a tightly sealed lid that would prevent things from crawling inside and contaminating the crew’s supplies.

The more Matt saw, the more he agreed with what Zack said.

Aster, however, didn’t back down. “Let’s turn this place on and find out. I think there is something deeper going on than an emergency shuttle. Things aren’t adding up. It’s still an escape pod of a most likely chaotic space ship. It makes no sense. It doesn’t have artificial gravity, but they build things like normal. Something is strange.”

None of them went and started touching the ancient devices they suspected might hold information; instead, Rah went and grabbed the portable and standalone AI the crew had already dug out of deep storage for them.

It was a useful but expensive device that could be lifesaving when connecting one’s [AI] to unknown devices.

As it turned out, the device was entirely useless, as the ancient tech was so old they predated [AI], or at least [AI] hadn’t been incorporated into its design.

Instead, the ship, or the civilization who made the ship, used a series of crystals which they etched information into and read off of in a seemingly permanent process.

It turned out to be a good thing, because it meant that, despite the passage of time, the Tiered material had kept its form long enough to be readable.

From that alone, they found out the ship was as old as they expected. Hundreds of millions of years old was their best, but not very definitive, guess, based on the physical material’s suspected age.

With a mix of trepidation and excitement, everybody present took as complete a scan of the crystals with as many methods as they could. All scans were backed up, then fed to Matt’s [AI].

Normally, such efforts would be a fool’s errand. That much data, absent of any context, from a civilization so old that even if their current language was a direct descendant, which was extremely unlikely, no remnants of that connection would remain. That went doubly so when the information was pulled from a medium that, even with its Tiering, had degraded and was likely encrypted to boot.

It wouldn’t matter how much mana he fed his [AI] if there wasn’t enough of a connection, and if he forced it to provide info despite that, the [AI] would be making stuff up. Such ancient relics needed to be taken to specialists.

Or at least, that would have been the case before he modded and merged his [AI] to such an extreme extent. While Matt of course felt how much faster and snappier it was even when running on less mana, he mainly had it doing things it could already do and had done.