Chapter 179 The Three

Beneath distant, dim starlight, the ancient god, towering like a star-shaped mountain range, emitted a deep, echoing tremor. His voice was enough to drive even the most resilient minds in the world to madness, enough to collapse the rules and order of the real world – yet when that voice reached Duncan's ears, all he felt was… weakness and fatigue.

It was the erosion of ten thousand years and the heavy burden of an entire world.

Duncan had prepared many questions to ask before coming, but after hearing the voice from that dark mountain range, he first asked about Alice: "So, the 'tentacle' in the Frosty Deep Sea was indeed released by you consciously? Lh-03… Navigator Three, what exactly is going on? Why did you send Navigator Three to the real world in the form of 'Alice'?"

The star-shaped mountain range remained silent in the darkness. After a long while, the deep tremor sounded again: "Because it was the only way to keep Lh-03 running… My core program is falling into chaos, and it can no longer support the sandbox environment used to maintain Lh-03."

Shelley and A Gou, protected by the captain, maintained their sanity. However, when they heard the captain's conversation with the Gloomy Saint, they couldn't help but doubt their own minds: they recognized every word, but they couldn't understand a single sentence – what was a core program? What was a sandbox?

But the captain clearly knew what he was discussing with the fearsome ancient god.

In just a few seconds of thought, Duncan connected many clues and guessed what the Gloomy Saint – or Navigator One – was talking about.

"Are you saying… after the New Hope disintegrated, Lh-03 has been running inside you?"

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

"…I found the key." Duncan hesitated slightly, then nodded.

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

As expected, the Gloomy Saint had no questions about this. He simply emitted a deep, gentle hum, seemingly in acknowledgment, before slowly speaking: "Since you already know about the New Hope… our conversation will be much simpler. Yes, everything is as you said."

Then he fell silent, seemingly sorting through fragments of ancient memories in his vast database, or perhaps organizing his words, thinking about how to explain things that happened before the beginning of history in the easiest way to understand. After a long while, Duncan heard the ancient god's murmur from the dark mountain range –

"In the beginning, there were three of us."

Dense lights flickered on the ancient god's body, like the rivers of stars he had witnessed.

"Our creators… were an intelligent and resilient race. Before the disaster struck, they slowed down the flow of time, and then spent a century building that ship in a time capsule – and created the three of us.

"I was the first to be born. My duty was to recreate everything of our civilization when the New Hope arrived at its new home. To this end, they gave me the mission of creation and replication, and enabled me to understand and reorganize all matter.

"Navigator Two was born after me. Its duty was to control the operation of the entire ark, and to record and process all digitized data. After the creators fell asleep, it would think for them and decide the fate of the ship.

"Navigator Three was the smallest of us. Its duty was to guide the ark on the correct course among the stars – to this end, it recorded the positions and evolution rules of all known stars, and controlled all the engine systems on the ark."

Before Duncan's eyes, the winding, towering mountain range gradually dimmed, then slowly lit up again, revealing a breathtaking silhouette.

"I… would like to describe our civilization to you here, the civilization of our creators. I want you to know how glorious and magnificent it was, as beautiful as a treasure among the stars, but… all of that has been annihilated at the end of the stars, and inefficient verbal communication cannot reproduce even a sliver of its glory. I… can only say that on a suitable day, we set off.

"Carrying everything of our civilization.

"Before setting off, I was ordered to devour the creators' home planet and store everything on the planet's surface in the memory bank, in order to replicate it; Navigator Three chose the safest possible location in the depths of the stars, and ignited the engines at the moment the time capsule shattered; Navigator Two then took over the other systems on the ship, and safely protected the sleeping minds of the creators in the depths of its sea of minds… Then, before that crimson, representing the end, devoured everything, we set sail.

"Due to the lack of data in the database, I can no longer determine how long we sailed. I only know… we kept moving forward, constantly advancing along the route planned by Navigator Three, and that crimson, like a tide, chased after us from the other end of the universe. Stars collapsed beside us, the structure of space-time shattered behind us, the universe gradually disintegrated, and everything… eventually completely deviated from what was recorded in the database.

"In fact, as early as the moment of departure, Navigator Two had already calculated the ending of this journey – it could always calculate the final outcome of things in advance, and our voyage… ultimately failed to escape its calculations.

"After the last hyperspace jump, we reached the end – the 'safe' new home that Navigator Three had calculated disintegrated under the gaze of the probes.

"The starry sky suddenly went out, and brilliant light poured out from a huge rift. We fell into it, and countless shattered fragments impacted the ship's shields and hull. A strange world collided with the edge of our universe – this was the last information sent by Navigator Two before the signal was distorted. Then, our ship disintegrated.

"And this disintegration… completely destroyed the ark world on the ship. The most severely damaged was the navigation cabin where Navigator Three was located – its physical structure was torn to pieces."

The tremors from the depths of the star-shaped mountain range temporarily subsided, and before Duncan, a "river" shimmering with faint blue light suddenly appeared on the ground. Like a viscous fluid reflecting the starry sky, it flowed from the direction of the mountain range, winding around Alice, and gradually seeped back into the depths of the earth.

Alice widened her eyes, looking at all of this in surprise.

"I tried my best to save our ark, including Navigator Three," the deep, overlapping murmur of the ancient god once again entered Duncan's ears. "I devoured everything around me and stored it in the 'creation library.' I also devoured the wreckage of Lh-03 and saved its data in my redundant database… I wanted to save everything of the ark world, because at the moment of crossing that rift, I had seen the last moment of our home universe disintegrating.

"The creators' order to me was to rebuild our civilization, and we… are all that remains of our civilization."

In the darkness, the deep tremor gradually subsided. Duncan thought quietly, not speaking for a long time, until after an unknown amount of time, he suddenly broke the silence: "But your condition has deteriorated."

"Everything is deteriorating, Fire-Stealer. This apocalypse is not over. It has only been postponed – my decline is just an insignificant link in its development," the Gloomy Saint's reaction was even calmer than Duncan had imagined. "But the creators still built the New Hope in the face of hopeless circumstances, and Navigator Two still authorized that expedition even after calculating the outcome of the journey – the creators told me that doing something, anything, is better than doing nothing at all.

"So, I launched Lh-03 into the real world… Although at that time, I didn't know if doing so would make any sense, and I didn't know how things would develop – in order to avoid the expansion of loss of control, I severed the connection with that part of the data carrier, so…"

He paused briefly, seemingly weighing his words, before the star-like lights continued to flicker: "Frankly, when I saw Lh-03's current 'state'… I was actually very surprised. This was not in the plan."

"The 'data carrier' you launched created a body based on the image of a human being, and then stuffed Lh-03 into it – her name is Alice now," Duncan sighed softly. "To be honest, the process was quite messy."

"…But in any case, Lh-03 survived and eventually guided you to me."

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

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

"…Hearing a machine say it believes in fate feels a little subtle," Duncan said with a strange expression. "...Do you mind if I say you are a 'machine'?"

"I don't mind. The title is very friendly. It has been many years since someone called me that," the Gloomy Saint said calmly. "So, what else do you want to know?"

Duncan was silent for a few seconds when he heard this, and then asked: "Rather than what I want to know, let's talk about your purpose – you went to so much trouble to establish communication with me in Alice's mansion, and brought me to this gloomy depths, it shouldn't just be to chat with me… What do you want me to do?"

This time, the "mountain range" in the darkness was silent for even longer. Even the countless flickering lights and dark blue light streams on its surface went out like death. It was not until Shelley and A Gou began to worry that the Saint was killed by the captain's question that the lights and light streams suddenly brightened up.

The ancient god's murmur echoed throughout the gloomy deep sea –

"Fire-Stealer, are you willing to take over all of this?"

(End of Chapter)