Deep Sea Embers.

Chapter 731 LH-01’s Memory

Under the distant and dim starlight, the towering ancient god like a star-shaped mountain range emits a low and overlapping tremor. His voice is enough to drive the most tenacious human beings in the world into madness, and is enough to cause the collapse of the rules and order of the real world—— However, when the sound reached Duncan's ears, all he felt was...weakness and exhaustion.

That is ten thousand years of erosion and the heavy load of the entire world.

Duncan had prepared a lot of questions to ask before he came, but after hearing the voice coming from the dark mountains, he first asked about Alice: "So, the line that touched the Frost Deep Sea back then Is it true that you consciously released the wrist? LH-03... Pilot , what is going on? Why did you send Pilot to the real world in the form of 'Alice'?"

The star-shaped mountain range was silent in the darkness. After a while, the low tremor sounded again: "Because this is the only way to keep LH-03 running... My core program is falling into chaos and can no longer We will continue to support the sandbox environment used to maintain LH-03."

Shirley and Agou, who were on the side, maintained their sobriety under the protection of the captain. However, when they heard the conversation between the captain and the Holy Lord Yousu, they couldn't help but start to doubt their own minds: they knew every word, but they didn't know a word. I don’t understand—what is the core program? What is a sandbox?

But the captain obviously knew what he was discussing with the formidable ancient god.

In just a few seconds of thinking, Duncan connected many clues together and guessed what the situation mentioned by the Holy Lord Yousu - or Pilot One was going on.

"You mean... after the disintegration of New Hope, LH-03 has been running in your body?"

A response came from the mountains: "It seems you already know a lot."

"...I found the key." Duncan hesitated slightly and nodded.

He believed that the other party would know what he meant by "key".

Sure enough, Holy Lord Yousui had no doubt about this. He just sent a low and gentle hum, which seemed to express his approval, and then slowly spoke: "Since you already know about the New Hope... then our communication It will be much simpler. Yes, everything is as you said."

Then he fell silent, seeming to be sorting out the memory fragments of the long past in his too huge database, or perhaps organizing language, thinking about how to explain in the most understandable way those things that happened before the beginning of history. It took a while before Duncan heard the whisper of the ancient god coming from the dark mountain range——

"In the beginning, we had three."

Dense lights flickered on the body of this ancient god, like the river of stars he had witnessed flowing.

"Our creators... were a race of intelligent and resilient people who slowed the passage of time before the disaster struck, and then spent a century building the ship in the time pod - and creating us at the same time Three.

"I was originally born, and my duty is to recreate everything in our civilization when New Hope arrives at its new home. To this end, they gave me the mission of creating and replicating, and allowing me to understand and reorganize all matter. .

"Pilot 2 was born after me. Its duty is to control the operation of the entire ark, and at the same time record and process all digitized data. When the creators fall asleep, it will think for them and decide which ship to use. The fate of the ship.

"Pilot 3 is the smallest one among us. Its duty is to guide the Ark to the correct route among the stars. To this end, it records the positions and evolution rules of all known stars, and controls the ark's All engine systems.”

In front of Duncan's eyes, the winding and majestic mountains gradually dimmed, and then slowly lit up by the light, showing a shocking outline.

"I... really want to describe our civilization to you here, the civilization of our creator. I want you to know how glorious and magnificent it is, and how beautiful it is like a treasure among the stars, but... all of that has been annihilated in the stars. The end of the world, and inefficient language communication cannot reproduce its glory at all. I... can only say that on a suitable day, we set off.

“With everything of our civilization.

"Before departure, I was ordered to devour the home planet of the creators and store everything on the planet's surface in a memory bank in preparation for its replication; Pilot 3 chose the most likely safe place deep in the stars. location, and ignited the engine at the moment the time capsule burst; Pilot 2 then took over other systems on the spacecraft, and properly protected the sleeping minds of the creators in the depths of its sea of ​​​​minds... Then, there We set sail before the crimson color symbolizing the end swallowed everything.

"Due to the lack of database, I can no longer determine how long we have been sailing. I only know that... we have been moving forward, along the route planned by Pilot 3, and the deep red is like a tide, floating in the universe. The other end is chasing after us, the stars collapse around us, the structure of space and time collapses behind us, the universe gradually falls apart, and everything... eventually completely deviates from the appearance recorded in the database.

"In fact, Pilot 2 has already calculated the outcome of this journey as early as the moment it set off - it can always calculate the final outcome of things in advance, and our voyage... failed to escape its calculation in the end. "After the final hyperspace jump, we reached the end - the 'safe' new home in Pilot 3's calculations fell apart under the gaze of the probe.

"The starry sky suddenly extinguished, and brilliant light burst out from the huge crack. We fell into it, and countless fragments impacted the shield and shell of the spacecraft. A strange world hit the edge of our universe - this is Pilot 2 The last message transmitted before the signal was distorted, and then our spacecraft disintegrated.

"And this disintegration... completely destroyed the craft world on the ship. The most severely damaged was the navigation module where Pilot 3 was located - its physical structure was torn into pieces."

The tremors deep in the star-shaped mountain range temporarily subsided, but in front of Duncan, a "river" with a dim blue light on its surface suddenly appeared on the ground, like a viscous fluid reflecting the starry sky flowing from the direction of the mountain range. , winding and flowing around Alice, and gradually seeping back into the depths of the earth.

Alice looked at all this with wide eyes and surprise.

"I tried my best to save our Ark, including Pilot Three," the low and overlapping whispers of the ancient gods once again reached Duncan's ears, "I devoured everything around me and stored them in the 'creation library' , I also devoured the wreckage of LH-03 and saved its data in my own redundant database... I wanted to save everything in the Ark World, because at the moment of crossing that rift, I had already seen my home universe. The final moment of falling apart.

"The order given to me by the Creator is to rebuild our civilization, and we... are all that is left of our civilization."

In the darkness, the low tremors gradually subsided. Duncan thought quietly and did not speak for a long time. It was not until an unknown amount of time passed that he suddenly broke the silence: "But your condition has deteriorated."

"Everything is deteriorating, Fire Usurper. This apocalypse is not over yet, it has just been postponed - my weakness is just an insignificant link in its development process." The reaction of the Holy Lord Yousu was worse than Duncan imagined. Be calm, "But the creators built New Hope despite little hope, and Pilot 2 authorized the expedition even though the outcome of the journey had been calculated—the creators told me that no matter what , is better than doing nothing.

"So, I launched LH-03 into the real world... Although at that time, I didn't know whether it made sense or how things would develop - in order to avoid uncontrolled expansion, I cut off the connection with that part Links between data carriers, therefore…”

He paused briefly, as if he was considering his words, and then the starry lights continued to flicker: "Frankly speaking, when I saw the current 'state' of LH-03... I was actually surprised. This is not intend."

"The part of the 'data carrier' you put out created a body based on the image of a human, and then stuffed LH-03 into it - her name is Alice now," Duncan sighed softly, "To be honest, This process is quite messy.”

"...But no matter what, LH-03 survived and eventually guided you to find me."

Duncan frowned slightly when he heard this: "Is this part of your plan?"

"No, I don't know how to calculate many things like LH-02. My duty is only to copy and create, but... I believe in fate, and fate can guide some things."

"...It feels a little strange to hear a machine say that it believes in fate," Duncan said with a strange expression, "...Do you mind if I say you are a 'machine'?"

"I don't mind. This is a very affectionate title. No one has called me that for many years," Holy Lord Yousui remained calm. "Then, what else do you want to know?"

Duncan was silent for a few seconds after hearing this, and then asked: "Rather than saying what I want to know, let's talk about your purpose - you have spent so much effort to establish communication with me in Alice Mansion, so that I came to this deep place not just to chat with you... What do you want me to do?"

This time, the "mountain" in the darkness was silent for a longer time, and even the countless flickering lights and dark blue light streams on its surface fell into death-like extinguishment. It lasted for an unknown amount of time, until Shirley and Agou both When I started to worry a little whether the Holy Lord was killed by the captain's question, the lights and light flow suddenly became brighter.

The whispers of the ancient gods echoed throughout the deep sea——

"Fire Usurper, are you willing to take over this?"

(End of this chapter)