Based on the ship's analysis of the current star system, it reached a rather troubling conclusion.
The Orks were trying to alter the trajectories of the planets, forcing them out of their original orbits.
The one that had previously been used to recharge the Attack Moon had already been dragged into motion and was beginning to drift off its former path.
At its current rate, it looked like it would collide with the sixth planet in the system.
No, not collide.
The data was being recalculated in real time, because the Orks were still making further adjustments to that planet.
The final result was not a direct collision, but a near miss.
However, the two planets would still stir each other violently through mutual gravitational attraction. They would not actually crash into one another, but under the pull of the star's gravity, the second one would also be dragged into a chaotic new course.
And the second round of calculations showed that this second planet would then go on to hit another one.
But even that data was still changing, because the Orks' adjustments had not stopped.
The end result was that the second planet would also brush past the third, and through their mutual gravitational interaction, the third planet too would be dragged out of its original orbit.
As for the first two, according to the newest data, they would ultimately end up heading straight for the star itself.
So they were trying to throw them into the star's embrace?
Why did this feel exactly like billiards? Like some absurdly skilled player taking a single shot and sinking every ball on the table.
And the most outrageous part was that every ball was being sunk into the same pocket.
The Orks could not seriously be playing it like that, could they?
If they really intended to send every planet in the system crashing into the star, then the whole system was doomed.
Of course, if they were going to play that way, it would still take quite a while before every "ball" dropped into the hole.
But the problem was that if the Orks were entertaining themselves like this, they would not be leaving this star for a long time, which made things troublesome.
After checking again, he found that the coordinates of the lost warship were on the opposite side, beyond the star itself. Since the Orks were busy "playing billiards" over there, they probably would not move to this side anytime soon.
Might as well go have a look.
Seventy-odd minutes later, he arrived at the target coordinates.
There was nothing there.
Completely empty.
And yet his ship reacted.
It was as if there were a magnet here. Once he drew close enough, it could sense a kind of magnetic pull emanating from empty space itself, proving that something did in fact exist here.
It should be at this set of coordinates, just not in realspace, but in another phased dimension layered onto the same point.
It was kind of like in A Certain Scientific Railgun, where Academy City was said to overlap with another phased space, and Kazakiri Hyouka was the sole resident of that space.
To put it simply, it was much like his own ship, hidden away in another dimensional layer.
So how was he supposed to get in?
He had no idea.
The Emperor's big ball of light had not bothered explaining that part.
He moved even closer, until he was practically pressing against it. At that instant, he saw faint ripples and noticed the nose of his ship sink inward ever so slightly, as though pressing into something.
Could it be...?!
So he pushed forward even more.
And the result was like a tiny bubble drifting into a larger one and merging with it.
Once the entire ship had passed through, the brand-new world before him left Kain stunned.
What came into view was a planet, a thirteenth planet that did not exist anywhere in this star system.
And that was not even the most important part.
In all the year and more since he had come to this world, this was the finest planet he had seen.
It looked untouched by mining, a life-bearing world with an ecosystem still in a highly primitive state.
Yes, it had to be a life-bearing planet.
There was an atmosphere. There were oceans. And on the ground, he could clearly see vegetation.
This was obviously a world that should have supported life.
Come to think of it, why did it look more and more familiar the longer he stared at it?
After circling around it once, he finally understood why.
Was this not Earth?
Had the humans of the Dark Age of Technology become so outrageous that they could create planets? Or recreate an Earth outright?
Even if they had simply taken an existing world and terraformed it to resemble Earth, that would still have been utterly unbelievable.
On top of that, he also noticed that after entering this place, the starfield outside looked different. And more than that, it did not change at all. Not in the slightest.
No, that was not quite right.
Comparing it with the star chart, some parts of the sky were the same, but there were slight deviations, as if just as landforms on a planet might change over long ages, the heavens too had changed over the passage of time.
Another way to put it was this: outside the house, you could see the real stars.
But now that he had entered the house, the ceiling and walls were covered edge to edge with an image of the starry sky, creating the illusion that the walls were transparent and that he was still looking out into real space.
Yet if you looked carefully, you could tell these were only images, because the stars inside did not move or twinkle, and they differed from the true starfield outside.
It looked like an artificial false sky-curtain.
But if it really was only a projected backdrop, then why did Kain have the strange feeling that if he touched it, it would become the real stars?
Like a painting so realistic it might swallow you whole into the world inside it, without you ever realizing you had left reality behind.
He stopped dwelling on the artificial sky and began descending into the atmosphere.
Once he drew closer to the surface, more abnormalities became apparent.
There was no trace of any human construction, no ruins, and not even any living creatures. No birds, no beasts.
Even the sea held no life at all.
He set the ship down somewhere and stepped out in power armor.
The armor reported that the atmosphere was breathable. More than that, its composition was exactly the same as Earth's atmosphere in the twenty-first century.
He looked down at the ground, pinched some soil, and pulled up a blade of grass. They all seemed real enough.
If that was the case, there should not have been no life at all.
No, that was not it.
Kain felt an indescribable sense of wrongness.
He had the feeling this world was fake, but not fake in the sense of being an illusion.
It was more like...
How to describe it?
Oh?
His power armor finished analyzing the plant he had crushed in his hand, and that was when he finally understood where that false feeling came from.
It was like body painting.
Some people were so skilled at it that they could actually have nothing on at all, and yet through paint alone create the complete illusion of clothing, fooling the eye completely.
But this place was not merely painted.
It was more like some kind of 3D printing had been used, producing objects with texture and resilience almost identical to the real thing.
From a macroscopic perspective, it would be almost impossible to tell the difference.
But under microscopic analysis, you could immediately see that it was fake.
It was like the difference between a full-scale model fighter jet and a real fighter jet.
This planet was exactly that: a "model planet."
So then, where was the lost warship?
It should be right beneath his feet.
In fact, no matter where he landed, it would still be directly below him.
The basis for that judgment was the other source of the Quantum Ghost resonance, which lay at the very center of this planet.
Do not tell me I have to dig all the way to the core?
What kind of joke is that?
The tunneling worm machine on his ship could never dig that deep.
There was only one other option.
Put the ship into time-stop mode again and crash straight down toward the planetary core.
(End of Chapter)
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