Age of Cosmic Exploration Chapter 327

Austin and his small group of people hid inside a hidden room with platinum walls. The room was unfurnished and every surface was an unidentified silver panel. It was unclear how thick the walls were, but when they stepped into the room, they all sighed in relief.

On the whole Noah One, no, in the entire planet, this room was the safest for humanity. Alas, the room was too small; it could only fit at most 50 people. With 30 plus people inside it, it was already crowded.

Of all the people there, Austin was the busiest. He had been busy monitoring and fixing the Noah One’s internal defence system.

About 10 minutes ago, these 30 people depended on their own memories of the Noah One’s internal structure to reach this hidden room, ignoring the threat of alien octopuses. They were temporarily safe; they only needed to wait for the ship’s auto defence system activation. After the aliens near and about the Noah One were cleansed, then… they would be totally safe!

"There are different kinds of defense systems, these include high soundwave vibration, high temperature microwave, and the most common explosions and bullets. Unlike the Noah Two, this spaceship was built with the intention of facing various alien monsters. The internal metallic walls and fixtures were made with the most high-tech combat armoured alloy and could withstand these destructive attacks. Of course, atomic grade destruction is a horse of a completely different color…"

Austin kept pressing the button as he explained. Behind him, a few soldiers still guarded him solemnly… Even though there was no danger about, or rather, they had nowhere to run if there was danger, these soldiers still upheld their responsibility loyally.

In a wait that was surfeited with anxiety, consternation, fear and anticipation, 10 seconds later, a great quake shook the ground. This cause several people to lose their balance and stumble to the ground. However, everyone showed an excited expression.

Only Austin slid down the wall and looked at his watch calmly and quietly. In his brain, he was calculating the time that would be needed to cleanse the Noah One and the monster number that would swarm into the Noah One after the fact.

"…Enough supplies, at least more than enough to last us until the first future generation matures into adulthood. Furthermore, the Noah One has an internal homeostatic system, artificial sunlight, and hydroponic technology. The original emergency supplies that were meant for 10,000 people is more than enough to help keep the 30 plus of us alive for a long time. Even in the future, when we have hundreds or thousands of people, it will still be more than enough.

"The key issue will still be energy. Space warp requires energy, the homeostatic system requires energy, even the life support system requires energy… Thankfully, perhaps it has been destined, before sh*t hits the fan, we managed to mine many radioactive ores, and they have been stored on the ship. If the ship was carrying less than 10,000 people, then the ores were enough to allow us to warp hundreds of times and enable us to live in space for hundreds of years… Perhaps it has already been destined…"

Austin thought back to the earlier maintenance and repairs on the Noah One. When the old captain was still around, even though he did not completely fix the Noah One, since that would require too much resources and manpower, he did fix the damages around the links between the ship cabins. This prevented air leakage, and the internal circulatory system was also updated. All of this seemed to be foundation for the mission that day, or else, even if Austin managed to lead these people inside the room, they would not have any chance at survival.

"The sperm and ovum banks have been depleted by 30 percent, but we can still use the remaining resources to cultivate tens of thousands of people, but we need to find a new base first, and that will be a worry after several decades or even several hundred years…"

Austin sat at the corner of the wall, his thoughts as his only company. When the quake in the room had stopped, he pulled himself up and said, "Let us go to complete our last step… Space warp!"

Then, several minutes later…

 "It has appeared! A disturbance in space! The high-tier civilization inside the cursed planet is showing itself!"

Just as the Noah One entered space warp state, almost simultaneously, all of the space civilizations around the cursed planet detected the change in space within the planet itself. Actually, when a civilization entered level 3, they would interact closely with technologies that dealt with space manipulation. In fact, as early as level 1, there were already researches on systemization of space, like the relationship between space and time, the relationship between space and energy, the relationship between space and gravity, and the like.

At the peak of a level 2 space civilization, there would be some rudimentary devices that could detect the disturbance in space around them. Most of the space civilizations had their devices targeted on the cursed planet. When they discovered the change in space reading, in the next few minutes, a large amount of planet boarding fleets rushed towards the cursed planet. The various alliances in space and the few independent level 3 space civilizations were cautious around each other. There was tension in the air; any spark could lead to a full scale space war!

In reality, the existence of human beings, alien octopuses, and the combination of the two had been detected by the many space civilizations. The main reason they did not do anything about it was due to the scary legend surrounding the cursed planet. Even though no one knew about its validity, the rumours had survived for millions of years, and it was a weighty spiritual pressure that pressed down on all the space civilizations there. Therefore, other than the rash Parlei Race, who was on a rampage on the surface of cursed planet, all the other space civilizations watched the development with a detached eye. However, when the ruin presented itself, they would not allow the Parlei Race to claim it so easily.

Therefore, the moment the space reading went off the chart, the entire space fleet mobilized. All the space civilizations started to sweat, even the civilizations in the same alliance started to get cautious of one another. When this space technology revealed itself, it would be the start of a space war!

Under such circumstances, a drastic change exploded… or rather a drastic change slowly exploded.

The first change was the Parlei Race that had been pillaging the cursed planet. There were various weird evolutions happening to their bodies. Either their bodies suddenly began metallic, or their muscles expanded crazily, tearing open their skin, and they evolved into a shapeless meat blobs, or their bodies suddenly became wooden. There were innumerable curious evolutions. It was a monster freak show.

Of course, this was not that surprising. Even though Pa Race creatures were renown for their high resistance against contamination and infection, it did not mean that they were immune to all strains of viruses. The scariest change was… these Parlei soldiers did not seem to notice their changes, or rather, it appeared like in their eyes, they were still unchanged, they continued talking and fighting like nothing unusual was happening before their eyes…

Not only had their bodies changed, even the spacecrafts operated by the Parlei Race had undergone similar changes. Either they became flesh, wood, metal, rock, flame, liquid, and the like. Every spacecraft changed into a different form, and the changes kept happening!

Just like how the Parlei Race ignored the changes that were happening to and around them, the civilizations that were closest to the Parlei Race’s fleet ignored the changes. Even if the change was right in front of their eyes, they did not respond to it in any way. Even the fleets that were further way were only startled slightly when they noticed this before they continued on to the cursed planet.

Only the civilizations with cosmic adaptors that stayed far away looked at this crazy evolution with stunned looks. The twisted spaceships that had lost their shapes were truly a sight to behold… However, the scariest thing was that all of them could still operate, and if anything, they moved even faster, as if the twisted evolution had increased their physical abilities. This kind of irregular, unscientific evolution… was like a scene out of one’s nightmare; it was completely illogical.

These civilization saw the evolution spread across the cosmos like a wave with the cursed planet as its centre. Everything within the wave was slowly evolving into different twisted form, and they saw the effect coming towards them.

At the same time, underneath the cursed planet, the people who were caught in the tunnel were in throes of despair. The tunnel’s exit towards the Noah One had caved in and the other end was swarming with endless controlled humans and alien octopuses. The heavy artillery barricade could not hold on forever.

This was real despair!

Almost all of the mysterious virus survivors were led by Yun Si to stand guard at the front of the defence barricade. Behind them were almost 10,000 human survivors. They were scientists, technicians, the injured, women, and children. They were fighting a losing battle!

The normal civilians behind them felt their consciousness giving, because they started to see illusions. The injured no longer felt the pain of their injuries, and in reality, under the gaze of the naked eye, their legs started to become metal, rocks, bones, and weirder stuff. Compelled by the will to live, they started to walk towards the direction of the alien octopuses… Indeed, it was as if they were offering themselves up to be eaten…

However, the scariest thing was that no one had noticed this change in the people around them. In their eyes, everything was the same. They did not realize that some humans were no longer… "humans"!

The space civilization with the S-grade space adapter that was furthest away from the cursed planet saw the changes happening clearly. They saw one of the planets around the cursed planet became flesh and eventually, on the surface, there were folds of flesh and bulbous tumours.

Right then, an inconspicuous spaceship, long and flat, with the shape of a chopstick, suddenly appeared in this piece of chaotic space, dangerously close to the cursed planet…

Chapter end