4780 Faded to Dust



Ves scouted the containers even more. He explored numerous clusters and made sure to take a peek in each of them with the help of Blinky. The companion spirit only needed a single glimpse in order to confirm whether any remaining phasewater was left inside.

He could not use the Phase King to sense the overall quantities of phasewater in all of the surrounding containers because the containers were made out of an alloy that was extremely effective at isolating phasewater.

Since each giant 'barrel' could potentially hold thousands of kilograms of pure phasewater, they had to be made out of excellently stabilized alloys that could withstand the constant spatial activity generated by pure phasewater.

Even then, Ves found it rather ludicrous to believe that all of the containers in this storage chamber collectively held hundreds of thousands of kilograms of phasewater!

He did not know how common phasewater used to be in the past, but it should not be common to the point where alien groups could gather phasewater as easily with the same level of ease as stockpiling food rations!

"The aliens probably stored phasewater in a diluted form." Ves guessed. "It is easy enough to mix phasewater with either a stabilizing substance or just plain water. By neutralizing the effects of phasewater or reducing its effective concentration, you can effectively make it a lot less dangerous to handle. It is also less risky to store blended phasewater over the long term this way. The only troublesome part is getting it back out again."

Blinky possessed no phasewater affinity or phasewater senses on his own, so the cat found it difficult to judge whether the containers held pure or diluted phasewater.

Whatever the case, both forms could be useful to Ves!

"Do you want to breach an energy shield and gather whatever phasewater you can find inside this cluster?"

Ves shook his head. "Not yet. It will take a significant amount of time and effort for me to do so. I do not think it is wise for me to get distracted by this when I haven't fully explored the lower levels of this prison yet. I need to take a peek at the other chambers and halls to see whether I can find anything worthwhile over there. My main priority is to find a control room where I can access the systems that still run this facility."

He would have loved to spend days in this storage chamber if he wasn't in the middle of a crisis. He loved to make lucrative discoveries like this! There was never a time where he had too much phasewater in his possession!

Still, he had greater priorities at this time, so he reluctantly turned away from the cylinders that still contained a fraction of the phasewater they still held and continued to explore the lowest level of the facility.

He failed to find anything interesting. Vast chambers and different rooms that clearly held a lot of furniture and other items in the past had now become completely hollow and barren.

Ves continually wondered why the previous occupants brought away all of the hardware but conspicuously left the containers that held varying quantities of phasewater behind. It was impossible for the natives of the Red Ocean to forgo the opportunity to take away a lot of free phasewater!

"Maybe the people who emptied this facility of all of its goods failed to break through the energy shields." Helena speculated.

"That is the theory that I am thinking about as well. It implies that the group that controlled this prison last did not manage to overcome the security barriers that isolated all of the precious phasewater."

"This indicates that there are issues relating to authorization and control. A prison breakout may have occurred that either succeeded or did enough damage that the current controllers of this facility lost a great degree of access rights. Either way, the survivors chose to abandon this facility with what little control they had left."

"That is the most plausible theory that I have heard, but we need to find a control room."

They continued to sweep the lowest floor, and when that did not yield anything, they moved to the next floor and repeated their search.

It was not until they entered the third floor from the bottom that the pair of 'siblings' finally encountered another break in the pattern.

This discovery was just as significant as the containers of phasewater down below, if not greater!

"I am not entirely certain yet, but if there is any place that holds a control room of sorts, it has to be behind that broken wall."

There was a broken wall!

This was the first sign of genuine damage to the facility that Ves had seen up to this point!

The walls in the other areas were completely whole at best and lightly scratched at worst. Their resilience was immense and most phasewater-based abilities simply failed to take effect.

Ves could not imagine what sort of attack had managed to breach through tens of meters of solid stone in order to create a tunnel that led to a smaller chamber that was situated at an odd location!

"Careful, brother. There may be danger up ahead."

"You don't need to remind me of that. I will just get close enough so that Blinky is able to scout ahead."

As Blinky moved into the tunnel and took a closer look at the breach, Ves soon figured out how an unknown group managed to break into the place.

"Look at the sides of this wall. You can see artificial signs that it has been smoothed out, but whoever did it mostly focused on making the floor as flat as possible while removing the rougher edges on the other sides and the ceiling. From the patterns I can see from them, I can deduce that the tunnel has been bored by an overwhelming application of thermal energy."

"Like a mining laser, right?"

"The big brother version of a mining laser." Ves replied. "It has to be a transphasic laser weapon at the scale of a mech-grade laser cannon or more probably a warship-grade cannon. What complicates it even further is that it cannot fire a single beam for a couple of seconds. Unless its power is overwhelming, the laser weapon most certainly took its time to drill all the way to the other side of the wall. In fact, the weapon stopped firing shortly before it managed to break through on the other end. Do you see how much more jagged and fractured the transphasic stone becomes in the distance? That tells me that whoever wanted to get inside simply hammered the last bits of stone into pieces."

"Huh." Helena already started to come up with a story in her mind about an epic prison break. "If these are the marks of an escape attempt, how have the prisoners gotten their hands on a warship-grade laser cannon?"

Ves grinned at her. "Who said anything about using armaments? All beings that claim that they are gods are all the same. They eschew external tools and always rely on their own intrinsic strengths to do the job. I can only imagine that a phase lord has figured out a way to output a powerful laser beam from his body and leverage his own phasewater to make sure the attack is strong enough to drill through all of this transphasic stone."

That sounded like a plausible theory. Ves knew he could have actually gone in this direction as well, though at a much smaller scale. He ultimately went in another direction. During his last marathon in the System Space, he settled for integrating a miniature kinetic gun in his cyborg leg and focused the remainder of his evolution on obscuring his true nature.

"So how does figuring this out help us at this junction?" Helena patiently asked.

"It tells me that if I absolutely have to breach through a lot of transphasic stone walls, I would be better off using an energy weapon rather than a kinetic weapon. More specifically, I should stick to relying on pure heat to melt or vaporize the stone and whatever phasewater is integrated into them. It makes sense as it is quite rare for phase lords to develop energy attack methods. It is much easier to develop in a similar direction as the Trampler of Stars and rely on growing a strong body first and come up with a few spatial manipulation tricks that can serve as your signature moves."

Obviously Ves had a low opinion of these delusional 'gods' who obsessed way too much about growing the biggest and densest bodies.

Sure, more meat helped with increasing the absolute amount of phasewater that a body could hold, but what was the point of that? An organism with several tons of phasewater in his body was merely a deadlier monster to Ves. At least the Compact cultists in the old galaxy made more sense by trying to transcend the limitations of the corporeal form entirely.

After conducting several more rounds of explorations, Ves tentatively concluded that no one had bothered to set up a trap in the tunnel.

"Let's head inside."

As Ves and Helena proceeded to move through the tunnel that was large enough to fit an elephant with plenty of room to spare, Blinky along with a small and simple observer bot flew forward.

Ves sent out the purple Star Cat to act as his eyes and ears while the bot merely served as a decoy that might trigger any hidden proximity traps.

Fortunately, nothing serious happened once they reached the other end. As Blinky entered the chamber on the other end first, the cat could immediately tell that he had entered an entirely different space.

The stones no longer looked bare and perfunctory anymore. Instead, faded alien frescos and other impressive images marked the walls. The ceiling and floor were both made out of a different transphasic stone variety with a brighter blue tint.

All in all, the chamber that Ves guessed was a control room was obviously set up to accommodate high-ranking personnel!

"Now we are talking." Ves smiled as he approached the left side first. "The fact that these markings haven't entirely faded yet is a testament to their higher quality craftsmanship."

It was a pity that all he could see were blotches of faded colors at this point. The alien artwork that previously made this room look more resplendent hadn't been able to withstand the test of time that well.

"Everything returns to dust in the end." Helena spoke as she studied the other faded painted walls. "It is easy for someone to rise to fame and be remembered for years. It is more challenging to have the monuments made after you endure for decades or centuries. Only the greatest figures can ensure that their names are kept in the history books, but even history can fade as a civilization rises and falls throughout the eons. The march of entropy proceeds ever onwards. All will fade into dust, and in time even dust shall crumble."

Ves directed a flat stare towards his sister. "Uhm, okay. Cool story. Anyway, we're here to see if we can access the controls of the prison facility. This has to be the right place."

He no longer bothered to study the artwork since they had all faded to the point of losing value. He turned around and moved directly to the other side of the chamber.

The metal clanking of his armor hitting the stone floor slowed down as he reached the end to behold the damage done to what appeared to be a large crystalline control interface.

Once upon a time, a brilliant command console must have covered this wall. The quartz-like crystals came in shades of purple to green.

Unfortunately, someone had come and ripped at least two-thirds of the crystals away.

If that was not enough, someone had come in and hammered at the remaining crystals, causing them to break. The broken ends of those crystals laid forgotten and abandoned on the floor.

His sister eventually floated closer as well. "So these are the controls that you hoped to access."

"Yes…"

"How will you proceed?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Ves started to grin behind his helmet. "I am going to fix this control interface!"