The Fire-Chasing Herrscher Who Destroyed the World

Chapter 258 [——Dr.MEI]

It wasn't until he got closer, no, to be precise, until he stepped on "it"'s back, that Mikael discovered that the elevated aqueduct he imagined was actually a corridor connecting various areas of the city.

Also, there are neither lakes nor water flows on the moon's surface, so why do we need aqueducts?

There was a dark pebble beside his feet, and Mikael casually pushed it away with his toes. Unexpectedly, the "pebble" rolled twice on the suspected stone corridor, making a crisp and familiar sound.

"This is--"

Mikael squatted down and picked up the black object. He squinted and looked at it for a moment, then quickly put it in his palm and held it tightly——

When he opened his hand again, the corrosion layer on the black pebble shell had faded away, and there were light yellow amber-like crystals inside.

Mikael constructed a special test tube, threw the crystal in and heated it slightly. With a slight "squeaking" sound, the crystal turned into a transparent liquid substance that was constantly flowing. However, if you magnify it countless times, you will find that it is not at all. liquid, but living nanorobots.

"What's wrong?"

"This is soul steel."

"!"

There are many similar "stones". Almost everywhere in this ruins, there are large or small black crystal blocks, which are soul steel.

"Such a massive amount of soul steel...why is it exposed so wantonly? It's like an open-pit mine, but the soul steel should be artificially made...unless there is some force that scatters these soul steels."

Mikael seemed to understand something. He first leaned down and put his hands flat on the ground, and the blue power penetrated downwards little by little.

He suddenly frowned, as if the situation was not as he thought, so he quickly ran towards the construction area ahead, groping around endlessly. If his actions were edited separately and displayed on the big screen, it would be very difficult to It was hard to imagine that he was touching cold and rough buildings and stones instead of something warm and soft.

After a while, he opened his eyes and showed an expression of "Sure enough," he said.

"The composition of the stone parts of the buildings is similar to that of lunar soil, and they should be constructed directly from the lunar surface. Some buildings are presumably important defense facilities. There are different thicknesses of soul steel inside the stone walls. The armor plates and soul steel now exposed are probably the remains left behind when this type of building was destroyed."

"oh?"

Alicia let out a sigh and jumped to the other side of the huge wall in front of her.

"Oh Mikael! It's exactly what you said, it's all soul steel!"

After hearing this, Mei couldn't help but reach out and touch the rough stone surface. She couldn't feel the structure inside like Mikael could, nor could she browse the tall stone walls and directly observe the internal structure like Alicia could.

Due to the obstruction of her space suit, she couldn't even feel the real touch of the stone walls.

She was silent for a while, then boldly took off her huge and heavy mask. Like a person who had been drowning for a long time and finally came to shore, she breathed in excitedly and greedily, breathing in this breath that had been lingering in the long river of time for tens of thousands of years. Even hundreds of thousands of years of air.

"Is it okay, Mei?"

"No...it doesn't matter..."

She casually threw the heavy mask to the ground and began to take off the heavy space suit without hesitation.

Of course Mikael understood her excitement, it was not a simple and passionate emotion.

On the contrary, the excitement stems from a lingering heaviness.

Neither Mei nor Alicia nor Mikael can bear the burden alone.

What's more, in the base, as the leader, Mei's every move is watched by everyone.

Of course, leaders are not immune to negative emotions, but there is often only one chance, which is why after this integration, Mei became the only leader of the Fire Chasing Moth - someone who does have self-awareness.

Now, for Mei, it is difficult to find a time when no "outsiders" are watching. She can do more "unbridled" and crazier actions than usual to vent the negative emotions that could not be resolved in the past.

So, she finally lay down on the surface of the stone wall, letting the heat from her body flow through her thin clothes into the cold, lonely stone wall where she had spent countless days and nights.

And not surprisingly, she snorted.

Ten minutes later, Mei adjusted her mood and began to retrieve the soul steel scattered around.

She carefully inspected every fracture in the soul steel, even though it was covered with many purple lines left by Honkai. Sometimes when she couldn't see clearly, she would move her face forward, so close... Sometimes Mikael even wondered if she wanted to swallow the soul steel in one gulp...

So Mikael also had to give a reminder:

"Mei, you'd better pay attention to radiation. It's hard to talk about things like Honkai Disease."

"Well?"

Mei shook her head indifferently, and yes, although the so-called Honkai energy adaptability and Honkai resistance are a quantitative standard, except for the warriors of the Fire Chaser, ordinary people will not do quantitative measurements. Testing, because testing itself is equivalent to exposing the body to large amounts of Honkai energy radiation.

So in most cases, these two indicators are nothing more than qualitative standards. It's no wonder that even though Mei emphasized it more than once, Mikael and Ellie still don't trust her body.

"Just leave this kind of job to Prometheus. If you get Honkai Disease, Kevin really won't be able to spare me. Besides, no one except you can... lead the Fire Chaser Moth."

Mei shook her head and choked back Mikael's nagging in just one sentence:

"Based on the current concentration of Honkai energy in the ruins, it doesn't seem to make much difference whether I come into contact with them or not, right?"

Think about it, most of Fire Moth's soldiers will have to amputate their limbs and retire due to Honkai disease after serving for three to five years, and only a few can get serum treatment. Even Spaci had an arm amputated due to years of research on Honkai Disease, and subsequently applied for serum twice.

It is a miracle that Mei has never been infected with Honkai Disease.

So Mikael had to believe what she said before - her inability to become a fusion warrior was not a problem of Honkai energy adaptability, but was caused by the incompatibility between the cells themselves and the fusion factor.

After thinking about it, maybe because she felt that the tone just now was too harsh, Mei added:

"Although the mobile terminal is easy to carry, it has limited computing power and memory. I want to use it in more important places. This kind of simple observation and judgment is enough with my own eyes."

"Oh? Mei, you must have made a very important discovery!"

Alicia jumped out from the side and calmly hugged Mei's shoulders. She twisted a crystal flower out of the palm of her hand behind her back, diluting the Honkai energy in the surrounding space as much as possible.

"Not exactly a discovery, more of a guess."

"Oh! Regardless of whether it is a discovery or a guess, you should talk about it first!"

Mei scratched her head and quickly organized her words:

"First of all, you don't care about the logistics of Fire Chasing Moth. Maybe you don't mean what so much soul steel in front of you means - just the soul steel plate that exists as armor behind this wall is enough to make thirty seventh god's weapons. Keyed.”

"Such a luxury!"

Mikael and Ellie clicked their tongues together.

I still remember that Mebius complained more than once about the reason why Famas was reluctant to the soul steel project. The original words were "the cost of one gram of soul steel is enough to rebuild the fifth team."

This is of course just a rough calculation and not rigorous, but if calculated according to this standard:

A team at that time had between twenty and thirty people. To build a new team like this would require about one hundred people and one year of A-level survival materials. The Key of the Seventh God, not counting production losses, weighed about two kilograms. That is A-level survival supplies for 200,000 people for one year.

The armor plate behind this wall is conservatively estimated to be equal to the weight of thirty Keys of the Seventh God, which is A-level survival supplies for six million people for one year.

Level A is a more comfortable level and is only allocated to the family members of coalition government employees. The amount of supplies distributed is more than three times that of level D, the lowest survival level. In other words, if this wall is converted into materials, it can at least feed 18 million people for a year at the minimum standard!

And there are more than a thousand such walls in the entire ruins? Although it is not possible to deploy soul steel armor plates on every side, even if it is one percent...

"That's right. Only by moving all the soul steel currently accumulated by Fire Chasing Moth to the moon can it be possible to build a city of this scale."

Mikael understood May's subtext - "What is the purpose of spending so much money to build such a city?"

The two people's eyes met silently, and Mikael nodded to Mei, confirming her guess:

"Moreover, why must soul steel be used as armor? In terms of hardness and toughness alone, soul steel is much stronger than special alloy armor plates, but it makes no sense to use it in buildings - because there is no need to consider weight, and heavier and thicker materials are used. The special alloy armor plate can also achieve the same effect, so..."

The three of them answered in unison:

"It's to block Honkai energy radiation!"

"Taking into account the concentration of Honkai energy around us, I personally feel that this may be... the place where the civilization before us fought against the Final One, the last Herrscher.

"Imagine, because the massive Honkai energy that comes with the final arrival will turn most of the warriors into dead soldiers immediately, so they installed soul steel armor plates on important buildings to survive the initial When the energy of the final arrival dissipates slightly, they will rush out of these bunkers together. "

Mei's description is very pictorial, and as for the so-called "previous civilization", everyone understands it tacitly.

"In this case, let's pay more attention to some buildings with soul steel armor. Compared to others, these buildings are obviously more important."

Mikael spoke before the silence spread, which was as it should be. May and Ellie both nodded.

But then he discovered that Mei and Ai Li were looking directly at him—you can't let girls do such things, right?

"..."

Mikael silently climbed over the wall and rummaged through the pile of rubble behind it for a long time, but found nothing except soul steel.

When he climbed over the wall again, he saw Alicia sitting alone on the edge of the cliff, looking at the large hole not far away, while Mei had already opened the Prometheus terminal and started to calculate something.

"Huh? Didn't you just say that you want to save Prometheus' computing power?"

He made a few remarks casually, and received a serious reply from Mei:

"I just thought of a possibility. Since there are a lot of soul steel buildings used here, there should be soul steel reserves that can be repaired and replaced. No matter what happens, there will always be more soul steel. After all, if we face the end, , there seems to be no need to transport these soul steels back to Earth."

Well, either you can defeat the End, and then you will have plenty of time and energy to transport it back. If you fail to defeat the End, then to civilization, these soul steels are like money that has not been spent after death, whether it is stored in a bank or hidden away In the nightstand, is there a difference?

"Doctor, based on the analysis of the photos of the moonbeam ruins you uploaded, there is a well-preserved large building five kilometers ahead along the edge of the pit. Judging from the comprehensive architectural style, it is speculated that it is a warehouse, but it is not certain. What is preserved in it is soul steel.”

Mikael moved his eyes and quickly found the building pointed out by Prometheus.

"It's a coincidence that it happens to be near the center of the crater, so you don't have to travel a lot. Could you please Mikael to use the power of the sky and go directly there. The rest of the exploration can only wait for the mass-produced fusion warriors to be in place. We are here The main task this time is to investigate the central crater.”

"Hey! Mei, do you have to wait until the end to announce the mission goal?"

Mikael spread his hands, walked to the edge of the cliff, and gently patted Ellie on the shoulder.

"Get up and get ready to go!"

I don’t know if Mikael’s voice was too soft, but Ellie didn’t react at all.

"Huh? Ellie? Alicia? Pink...elf lady?"

Still no response.

Mikael put his mouth to her ear disbelievingly and hesitated for a moment, but then he moved his eyes downwards and saw the flesh marks on the girl's thighs that were stretched by the leg rings. He tugged at the corners of his mouth and shouted——

"Pink fat lady!"

…………

Ten minutes later, in front of the "warehouse", a rift in space opened, and Mikael, whose ears were red and was about to cry without tears, walked out first.

The door to the warehouse was naturally closed, so Mikael reached out and pushed it, but it didn't move at all. Thinking of the armored door in Fire Chasing Moth's base, he changed his method, inserted his hands into the crack of the door, and pushed it open on both sides.

"Rumble--"

For endless time, a thick layer of lunar soil has been adsorbed on the door wall, and now it rises under the intensive vibration, forming a choking dust haze.

A large amount of small gravel rolled down from the top of the warehouse, falling on Mikael's head and shoulders like raindrops.

After he opened a gap that could accommodate two people walking side by side through the two door walls, which were hundreds of meters high and nearly ten meters thick, he turned around, as if he was standing in the wild on a snowy day after being soaked in the snow all night. fool.

"Pfft!"

Ellie, May, and Prometheus all laughed.

"puff--"

Mikael pursed his lips gently and made a popping sound, and a haze of dust immediately rose in front of his eyes.

In the end, Alicia, who was still leaning forward and back, almost shaking her waist with laughter, stepped forward and helped him dust the dust on his face and body.

Mei looked on with pursed lips, and Prometheus suddenly asked in a low voice:

"Doctor, do you need to take a break? It's almost time to communicate with Captain Kevin today?"

"Oh? How long until the appointed time?"

Mei asked casually.

"Uh... there are still two hours, thirty-two minutes and fifty-seven seconds left."

"..."

Mei sighed softly, thinking that when she returned to the base this time, she must remove the "cold humor" module derived from Kevin in the Prometheus emotional simulation module.

She has become better than her predecessors.

The warehouse was dark, and the cool breeze flowed out from the door crack, which was extremely small compared to the main door.

"Well!"

Mikael suddenly covered his head.

"What's wrong?"

Ellie, who was one step away, immediately supported him, but Mikael just shook his head, indicating that he was fine.

He had just used the power of consciousness to explore it, and there was nothing inside that could be called life. Even though he had expected it, and even though he didn't have any hope, he still did it.

He spread his hands flat, a flame ignited in his palms, and then he took the lead and stepped in.

Alicia held his hand, leaned against his arm, and asked softly:

"Why not just construct the light?"

Mikael rolled his eyes at her, whether he should say anything or not, it was only at times like this that he would remember that his job was the Herrscher of Reason, not the Herrscher of Space/The Herrscher of Consciousness/The Law of Death. The Herrscher of Fire/The Herrscher of Thunder...uh, what else is there?

If Ellie could hear his voice, she would definitely cover her mouth and use the nickname he gave himself with a self-deprecating mentality many years ago - The Herrscher of Weakness.

While the two people in front were stuck together, Mei Yi walked in holding the Prometheus terminal.

Prometheus in the three-dimensional projection state is exuding light blue fluorescent light, and the range she illuminates is much larger than the handful of flames in Mikael's hand.

Because of this, she almost immediately caught a glimpse of the human-like black shadow behind the door——

"Doctor, be careful!"

As a pure projection, despite her intentions, she couldn't do such a thing as protecting Mei.

She could only increase the power distribution of the lighting function area as much as possible in order to illuminate the dark shadow for Mei. But at the same time, a trace of doubt flashed in her heart - even though Mikael and Alicia were laughing and joking, the possibility of them letting their guard down at the same time and making such a low-level mistake was very low, right?

"It's okay, it's just a mecha."

Mikael, who was walking in front, said without looking back, of course he would not make such a stupid mistake.

The dazzling blue light cut through the darkness. Sure enough, as Mikael said, it was just a mecha, human-sized, with its feet in a walking posture, and its hands stretched forward unevenly. No wonder Promi Hughes would regard it as an enemy.

However, the energy lamp on its chest and its eyes were all dim, glowing a gray-white color as dead as the moon, and it had obviously lost the ability to move.

Mei suddenly boldly took two steps forward, pointed her index, middle and ring fingers on the mecha's dusty chest, and then applied gentle pressure.

"boom!"

The mecha, which weighed hundreds of kilograms, fell to the ground with a crash, but its arms and legs still remained as they were when standing.

Mei did not stop there, but took two more steps and squatted in front of the mecha.

"Snapped!"

Mikael finally fulfilled his duty as the Herrscher of Reason. He lightly snapped his fingers, and the cold and dazzling white light illuminated the entire warehouse as bright as day.

And Mikael and Ellie finally understood Mei's anomaly - the humanoid mecha was not as simple as an ordinary mecha. Although the internal circuit structure and chip situation were not clear yet, from the appearance alone, it looked very much like a mecha. It is a general-purpose humanoid mecha designed by Mei when she first joined the Fire Chaser Moth.

Although the appearance alone doesn't mean much, similar mechanical structures often mean there are certain similarities.

For example: the human form in the strict sense is actually not the best structure for a mecha. Designers should and will definitely modify it accordingly to make it fully comply with mechanical dynamics rather than biology.

The reason why Mei originally designed this kind of mecha strictly in human form, both in shape and size, is because this kind of mecha was designed to be used by individual soldiers since its birth.

Or to put it more bluntly, just like Iron Man, it is carried by people and directly controlled by people... Compared to mechas, it may be more appropriate to call it armor.

Mei also has every reason to believe that the same is true for the mecha in front of her...

So……

Mei clenched her hands and found the external emergency button without hesitation and with great skill.

"bass--"

With a crisp sound that shook her eardrums, the mecha's armored mask instantly flew out, grazing the side of Mei's face and even cutting off the strand of hair hanging down from her temples. This made her understand that the machine in front of her was... A is not exactly the same as the one she designed.

"Ka-ka-"

After two more dull sounds, the mecha's limbs softened.

"how?"

Mikael asked knowingly.

Under the mask, there was nothing, which made people feel inexplicably sad, especially for Mei. She noticed the final movement of the mecha and thought there would be someone inside.

No, she came back to her senses - of course there were people here, otherwise how could they make such a gesture?

However, over tens of thousands of years, there was no oxygen here, and the corpses had long been decomposed to the point where nothing was left.

This was actually something that had been expected, and Mei was not sad about it.

All she could think about was—what a pity it was that no one knew about them before they died, and it remained the same after they died. Then we...

Her sorrow is nothing more than the sorrow of a rabbit and a fox.

However, from Mikael's perspective, what he saw was a more desperate scene:

Over hundreds of thousands of years, the body has long been annihilated, and all the memories in the sea of ​​consciousness have been worn away and become blank. Only the last unwillingness and despair before death permeate the air -

That's why Mikael groaned in pain before entering the door. The power of consciousness itself can't compete with this despair that has lasted for hundreds of thousands of years, and is in danger of overturning at any time.

"Well! Do you two have a laugh? It's better to have nothing than to have a skull suddenly appear and scare everyone, right?"

Alicia forced a smile, narrowed her eyes and told a cold joke.

With her intelligence, whatever Mei could think of, she could naturally think of it too, at most a little slower.

Well, just a little bit really!

But it’s not good to be so silent all the time, right? There has to be someone to liven up the atmosphere!

But no one laughed, not even bitter, embarrassed, or pandering smiles.

Ellie opened her eyes and saw that Mei, Mikael and Prometheus did not care about the mountains of equipment and soul steel behind them. Their eyes were focused on a small piece not far from the direction where the mecha fell. On the glass obelisk.

The glass obelisk is not big, about the size of four palms. After blowing away the accumulated dust with the wind, you can see that it is covered with incomprehensible words.

Mei and Mikael looked at each other, and the latter nodded, waved his hand, and constructed a lot of complicated equipment.

Mei connected the terminal of Prometheus to this pile of complex equipment, while Mikael walked to the glass obelisk and used a file to get some samples - luckily the shock of the mecha falling to the ground didn't shatter it.

In just a few dozen seconds, Prometheus gave the dating result——

"Sample testing shows that this glass obelisk was made approximately 250,000 years ago."

"Can you decipher the inscription?"

Mikael asked.

He didn't think that the predecessors would leave inscriptions here while they were idle. Then there must be something extremely important recorded on them - maybe there was some final authority that had not been revealed when he traveled through time?

Although Mikael also knew that this was probably impossible.

After mankind encounters the End and discovers its authority, there should be no time to record inscriptions.

"I'm not sure. We need to analyze the samples first. But theoretically, as long as it is a language developed by late Homo sapiens, I can roughly interpret it through comparative analysis."

This is what Mei was waiting for. She uploaded all the inscriptions with a scanning device, then walked aside and waited for Prometheus to interpret it.

"Something is wrong."

"What's wrong?"

Mikael also instinctively felt that something was wrong, but he couldn't tell what was wrong.

He turned his head and looked at Alicia, who was the same.

Mei pushed his glasses and said hesitantly:

"Two hundred and fifty thousand years ago... Today's archaeology has found traces of 'humans' two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, but you should also know that most of them are apes. And our ancestors, late Homo sapiens, only left Africa 100,000 years ago. Or let me put it another way...If there was a human civilization on Earth that was strong enough to face the end two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, why is there no corresponding archaeological discovery?"

"Hmm? Could it be that these relics were originally left by the moon people?"

Alicia made a little joke again.

Mei, who was extremely rational, didn't even notice the joking tone, and continued to analyze:

"Impossible, if there was a developed civilization on the moon, there shouldn't be only this site left... It's true that we haven't explored the entire moon. But this site seems to have no traces of food production, and it's obviously impossible to call it a civilization..."

She spoke faster and faster, but fortunately Prometheus interrupted her in time-

"Doctor, the deciphering result of the inscription is out."

Her tone was a little hesitant and a little weird, and the three of them frowned deeply at the same time, but not because of Prometheus's abnormality.

The deciphering time was less than a minute in total, what does it mean?

This means that the text on the inscription is extremely similar to what they use today.

And it is obviously from the same lineage-late Homo sapiens.

But late Homo sapiens only walked out of Africa 100,000 years ago, how is this possible? ? ?

However, when she saw the inscription... No, compared to the inscription, it is more like the last page of a diary, or a suicide note, Mei's pupils suddenly contracted, and all the answers were revealed-

[Hello, successors.

[When you see this inscription, our era must have ended long ago.

[But I am still very happy - if someone can really see this inscription, it means at least that the traces of our existence have not completely disappeared, and the flame of human civilization has not been cut off.

[But at the same time, this also means that your civilization should be in a similar situation as ours, right?

[A small reminder for you, the last Herrscher, the Herrscher of the End, will appear after the twelfth Herrscher is defeated. The location where He appears is fixed. Yes, you must have seen the crater outside.

[Okay, Προμηθε... Oh, that is, my artificial intelligence partner, she is urging me to make a long story short again. After all, the Honkai energy is so rich that the battle should start soon, and we don’t have much time.

[I hope Kevin and his team can win, but if that happens, I will definitely destroy the inscription before they come back, hehe.

[——Dr.MEI]