Mutagen

<strong>Day 152 - 1:42 AM - Sanctuary, Catanduanes Mountains, Municipality of Bagamanoc, Catanduanes</strong>

After Nineteenth confirmed what the writings on her book were, everyone's attention became focused on it. It was information about the thing that was going to hit Earth soon. There was no way that anyone would not feel the urgency to know anything about it.

However, the first few pages had unexpected information.

Instead of the information about the planet the debris came from, it was a report of the first sighting of planetary debris.

"Wait a minute..." Mark's eyes fell on the date of the documentation. "They knew about it more than two months ago?"

That was right. The documentation dated about two and a half months ago, and it seemed that even Fourth and Nineteenth were surprised by that fact. At the time that the Eyes knew nothing about the second wave yet. However, by the looks of it, the aliens knew about the planetary debris. It was even before the inhabitants of Earth knew about it.

Then, why did Professor Alston not tell Mark about this when they exchanged information with each other.

At that thought, Mark shook his head.

It was not that Professor Alston did not know. Mark never asked anything about something that he did not know would happen. That alien professor only answered Mark's questions, after all. Furthermore, it was not his duty to tell anyone about the incoming catastrophe.

Mark continued reading further. The report continued with the order to investigate the spotted debris.

"Hmm?" Diwata Iraya's eyes fell on some illegible words. "What did that mean?"

Nineteenth's book did not display a concrete document in a single language. In fact, to the reader, it showed a language that they could easily understand. In Mark's case, the book was written in English. However, in the eyes of Diwata Iraya, it was written in the Spirit Language.

Still, Mark was also focused on the same word. No, rather than a word, it looked like random symbols packed together.

"My apologies." Nineteenth lowered her head. "The document was written in a language barely known to anyone on Earth. While I managed to translate it into a language everyone could understand, some words had no equivalent translation in any language on Earth."

"Those symbols were the raw words from the document, then?"

Mark asked, and Nineteenth nodded.

Knowing this fact, Mark could only shrug. Even different languages on Earth had some words that were hard to translate into another language. It should not be surprising that there were untranslatable words on a document written in an alien language.

Because of the translation error, everyone could only skip those words. It made Mark remember the time when he was reading badly translated manhua. There was a whole lot of it, after all. When everything of those was gathered and counted together, it would make anyone think if the bad translations were done on purpose. It mostly happened on those Chinese comics, after all. The Japanese and Korean comics, manga and manhwa, barely had these issues after being translated.

Back to reading the documents, Mark reached the part where the result of the investigation came in.

Unexpectedly, the first result report was about casualties. As it appeared, the investigation team that Professor Alston sent actually had casualties upon investigating the debris.

This made Mark frown.

That planetary debris did not only carry a different pathogen. It was actually carrying infected in space. Furthermore, the infected were actually capable of destroying a few investigatory space ships of the Graylings.

This was bad news.

Even so, Mark did not start to discuss that and continued to read instead.

Finally, Mark reached the concluded information. It was the report of where the planetary debris came from and what pathogen it carried.

Commercial Star - CS-11 Orbital Trade Station

It was an artificial planet intended to house an artificial race called Mecinas. While it housed the artificial race, the station was also to serve as a Space Trading Hub for space travelers and planetary merchants.

Mark had shivers. It was actually sounded too much from a Sci-fi story. However, he did not stop reading.

The artificial planet was quite small. It had a radius of just a little bit more than two thousand kilometers. It meant that it was just a bit larger than Earth's moon.

However, five hundred years ago, the CS-11 faced a catastrophe after its artificial atmosphere was breached by a large meteoroid.

This information made Mark remember what happened to Earth during the start of the outbreak.

As Mark expected, the meteor contained the pathogen that infected the inhabitants of the artificial planet.

Since it was a Trading Station, it was not only its first inhabitants, the Mecinas, were the ones infected. There were various races that became infected, causing the whole artificial planet to immediately fall into chaos.

It took only a month and all life was wiped out in that small artificial planet.

Being artificially made, however, the planet had its measures.

At the time that all life was extinguished due to a pandemic, the artificial planet was designed to self-destruct.

As such, it immediately exploded, trying to kill all the infected on its surface. It was unlike Eriellis. The planet that Freed came from exploded for unknown reasons, after all.

Unfortunately, there were some miscalculations in the self-destruct sequence. One part of the planet did not explode into smithereens after the supposed explosion did not happen in that area. Because of the explosion from the other areas of the artificial planet, it caused that large part to get hurled into space intact.

Many space organizations went to track that space debris. After all, it was a dangerous thing to be destroyed. However, it seemed to have entered a turbulent space area, causing everyone to lose sight of it.

Now, the very same lost debris reappeared and was hurtling towards Earth, with the surviving infected specimens on its surface.

Mark began to digest all this information as his eyes fell on the data about the Mecinas, the inhabitants of CS-11.

The Mecinas were artificial intelligent creatures created by an ancient race of aliens called Devinas. These artificial creatures were specifically made to monitor the Space Stations created by the Devinas.

Mecinas were half-organism, half-machine creatures. Although they appeared to be humanoids with bodies made of muscle tissues, their bodies had mechanical parts that allowed them to have various functions that a regular organism could not do.

This made Mark quite interested.

"In short, space androids, huh."

Mark murmured.

He was not wrong.

But then, the worst part came.

It was the nature of the infection that caused the destruction of CS-11.

The Mechid Pathogen.

It was a pathogen that would cause the infected to show aggressive tendencies towards uninfected and would try to infect them through bites. This was generic among these zombie-like pathogens.

However, the abilities that the pathogen would give the infected made Mark frown deeply.

Mechid Pathogen would turn the infected's muscle mass unstable, turning body parts of their victims into tissue-covered blobs. However, these blobs enabled the infected to integrate mechanical parts into the infected's bodies. Depending on the parts of the bodies of the infected that turned into blobs and the kind of mechanical part that the infected acquired, it would cause the infected to turn into various kinds.

From the records, the most common were infected with mechanical arms or legs. However, there were a lot of accounts of stronger infected like a spider-type humanoid and even a mechanical golem-type. Furthermore, due to the type of infection being unstable, there were a lot of shapes it could take on depending on the infected individual.

At this point, Mark was rubbing his temple.

It was a very troublesome kind of pathogen.

"Mechid Pathogen, huh."

Mark was having a headache. It seemed that in the future, not only mutated infected would terrorize Earth. There would also be mechanical infected. In the worst case, the two pathogens might also fuse, giving birth to mutated mechanical infected.

Surely, it was a headache.

However, at the same time, Mark felt excited. It was something that could not be helped by someone like him. He was both an Otaku and a Zombie genre fan, after all.

Mark was the first to read all of the information. Actually, it only took him a few minutes. While he was already at the end of the document, almost everyone else barely reached half of it. Because he was the first to finish, Mark had time to think about things while he patted Miracle, who was sitting on his lap. Aside from Iola, both Miracle and Abbygale were not reading the document. It was too complicated to the young Abbygale, and Miracle did not know how to read, after all.

It was not surprising that Mark was the first to finish. He only needed to glance at the document, and it would be stored in his subconscious. He could review it anytime he needed.

At this point, Mark felt a gaze. It was from Nineteenth. She did not need to read it at all since it was her book.

"Thank you for your cooperation."

Suddenly, Nineteenth's voice echoed inside Mark's mind.

"So, you can also do this, huh?"

Mark replied inside his mind, making Nineteenth nod slightly.

"Even if I could access any information on Earth, it would be impossible for me to read every single one of them. Even for me, there is a lot about Earth to learn. Since you managed to point us to the correct information about the incoming disaster, you have my gratitude."

"You guys didn't know about Professor Alston's research?"

Mark asked.

"No, unfortunately." Nineteenth sounded apologetic. "We barely cared about the visitors as long as they did not cause any trouble. So far, Alphfa Alston and his group are behaving fine to our standard. In fact, they were helping survivors in America to some extent. We can only be grateful to them for that fact."

Hearing those words, Mark thought differently. Mark was sure that that Grayling Professor was not someone who would show good without anything in exchange.

"I'm pretty sure that they were only doing that for benefits."

Mark said in contempt.

"Even so, it did not change the fact that there were a lot of human survivors that were saved because of them."

Nineteenth replied.

It was not wrong, after all. Even if it was for benefits or a deal with the American Government, they did save people.

"By the way." Mark closed his eyes and spoke in his mind. "From what Fourth said, you Eyes can't do anything about that planetary debris? In terms of powers, you guys are stronger than the lost and forgotten gods. Yet, you guys needed their help for some reason."

"So, we can't hide it from you now." Nineteenth bitterly smiled. "We are protectors and guides of Earth. We are created from the emotions of humans on Earth. We can only show our prowess and abilities inside Earth, because of that. Even an inch that we step outside Earth, we lose all our strength. Some of us might be able to create beams of energy to destroy and kill but these beams can't extend outside the Earth's atmosphere and would instead dissipate. That is why the only thing we can do is to prevent our designated territories from sinking when the disaster struck."

Those words from Nineteenth were heavy. In a way, they were prisoners of Earth while being its protectors.

"Are you pitying, us?"

Nineteenth spoke in Mark's mind, sensing his thoughts.

"You don't have to."

With those few words, Mark understood what the girl in front of him wanted to say.

It was the reason they exist.

It was their duty.

It was their fate.

Furthermore, it might not be in the most ideal state. Earth, even in its peaceful days were chaotic. There were a lot of people leading their lives astray.

Now, everything was in chaos. Lives became cheap and many people had become evil.

Even so, despite their grumbles and personalities...

The Eyes...

They liked Earth... They loved Earth...

And most and foremost...

They will protect the humans inside it as much as they could.