The Mech Touch

As Ves continued to make his way to the lower floors, he began to notice more architectural features that he previously overlooked.

The cells and the hallways were all decently lit. The light levels were on the lower side, but not to the point where people risked bumping into each other because it was too dark in their cells.

Ves curiously moved closer to a wall and noticed that it was the source of the lighting. Somehow, the wall was constructed in a way that caused the phasewater integrated in the outer surface to release constant energy in the form of soft light.

"Interesting."

As a mech designer and a phase lord who had become versed in phasewater theory, he knew it was not that simple to engineer such a uniform light source at such an enormous scale.

If not for the fact that the facility was made out of inorganic stone, he would have thought that this place was constructed by the phase whales.

However, even if the phase whales had done nothing aside from creating this pocket space, Ves guessed that the builders of the prison most certainly had ties to the powerful native alien race.

That caused him to become a little more vigilant. The phase whales were inscrutable and behaved much differently from other aliens.

As they were aquatic in nature, they experienced vastly different lives than humans or other aliens. They were much more indifferent towards matters such as wars and death, and did not really possess empathy in a normal sense.

Although the subject was taboo among the native alien races of the Red Ocean, there were plenty of humans who wondered whether the phase whales evolved naturally to begin with. Their affinity and compatibility with phasewater were simply too high.

There were even people who speculated that the phase whales used to be a lot less different than other intelligent aquatic races. The reason why they had become so powerful was because they had advanced their technology to such an extent that they managed to upgrade their entire collective genome so that even the most plain and normal whales among their kind could integrate more phasewater into their bloodstream with relative ease!

That would have been an unimaginably grand project if this outlandish theory happened to be true!

Lots of humans dreamt about doing this to the human race as well. It had long been in the realm of possibility to collectively upgrade humanity's genes so that they would all become more powerful.

Heavy gravity variant humans were actually the most 'successful' and ubiquitous results of these efforts!

The majority of dwarves possessed genetic codes that were natural and stable enough that it could be used to procreate more dwarves without worrying about genetic decay. They could easily expand their entire population at a rate that was just as quickly as baseline humans!

Many families and other groups also practiced this kind of generational gene propagation. The diversity was enormous and the results were mixed.

Instead of developing custom designer baby formulas that were customized for each individual child, they instead tried to create a high-quality variant of humanity that performed better in any way, thereby ensuring that many generations would be able to enjoy the same advantages.

It did not entirely work out in practice.

One of the reasons why dwarves became so numerous in human civilization was because their variant was cheap and easy to produce.

The same could not be said for high-end specs. The amount of resources required to grow a single designer baby was already great. Trying to grow millions, billions or trillions of them quickly became prohibitive even for first-rate states!

The resources required to grow better brains or stronger muscles often consisted of exotics that could only be supplied up to a point.

The only way to prevent these expensive posthumans from bankrupting a state or organization was to control their growth rate, especially when times were tougher than in the past.

If a group's circumstances became dire enough, then its people might become extinct due to the painful fact that no one was able to afford the cost of raising their expensive children anymore!

"Maybe this is why the phase whales have such a low fertility rate." Ves idly guessed. "With their mastery of biotechnology, they should easily be able to find a way to increase their birth rate. The reason why they haven't is not necessarily because they are uninterested, but because they know it would put too much strain on their environment to raise so many of their kind."

This was unimaginable to humans as their fecundity was one of the key reasons why they had managed to rise up and become a powerful race during the Age of Conquest.

Ves knew that factions such as the Transhumanists did not care too much about this, but there were also many traditionalists who felt that unrestricted genetic modification would lead to massive societal problems and repeat the mistakes of the past.

As Ves continued to think about a subject that was no longer related to the situation at hand, he abruptly stopped when Blinky made a massive discovery at the turn of a corner!

He had reached one of the lower levels of the facility at this time. There were no more cells around him as he had apparently reached a floor where a number of large halls were situated.

He did not know what purpose they served, but he guessed that they may have been used for storage or other purposes.

What he did not expect to find was a pile of bones.

"What the…?"

After Blinky flew around a bit to make sure there was nothing else in the large, stadium-sized hall, Ves cautiously stepped forward and studied the bones from a distance.

He could immediately see that the bones were undoubtedly ancient. Even if they did not have a speck of dust and hardly degraded over the ages, Ves could feel the sense of age exuding from their dry and clean surfaces.

He cautiously stepped closer and tried to analyze and scan the heap of bones with the help of the advanced sensors integrated in his Unending Regalia.

The data quickly allowed him to make a number of preliminary conclusions.

The first one was that the bones came from many different races. Their shapes, their material composition, their sizes, their densities, their growth marks and other indicators were all different.

As Ves stopped at a modest distance from the edge of the pile, he could clearly see that the bones had not been stacked in a careful manner. It looked as if a large alien attempted to place them in a way that kept them together but did not care about showing any respect to the alien individuals who grew these bones.

What concerned him a bit was that the vast majority of bones looked as if they belonged to races that could tower over humans.

"Do these… come from the former prisoners of this facility?"

Why pile them up here? Why not dispose of them so that they wouldn't litter this chamber?

Ves couldn't help but imagine several different explanations for what he was seeing.

One of them was that the prison had been operating for a long time, but that it had suddenly been cut off from normal space without explanation.

Once the prison guards had become trapped and isolated from their homes, they eventually grew mad and fought against each other as they degenerated into savage beasts!

Eventually, the surviving guard managed to slay his or her colleagues and ate the flesh of their bodies until there was nothing left but bones.

In order to commemorate the fallen, the final survivor built this tombstone out of bones to remember the dead.

"This is a ridiculous theory!"

Ves found it difficult to believe in this colorful story. It was much more likely that the bones belonged to unruly prisoners who managed to launch an escape attempt by using a similar method as Ves, only to get caught by the guards before getting executed. The bones served as a reminder to every other inmate of the fate that awaited them if they attempted to do the same!

Ves' body shuddered a bit as he realized that he might be the same as the poor aliens whose bones had been turned into a macabre monument!

This also ignited his curiosity.

He wanted to learn more about this prison!

He wanted to learn more about the ancient beings who left no trace of their existence behind asides from these alien bones!

He wanted to learn what this pile of bones truly represented!

After hesitating for a dozen or so seconds, he decided to bite the bullet and reach out to touch one of the bones.

Although he wasn't able to touch the surface with his bare skin, his limb had moved close enough for him to sense whether there were any spiritual traces left behind.

He struggled to sense any spiritual traces. These bones had existed for so long that whatever resentment or regrets their owners held had already dissipated due to the passage of time!

"What about phasewater, then?"

He didn't find any traces of phasewater either, but he could tell the bones used to be infused with it. This was a strong indicator that the bones used to belong to captive phase lords who were too powerful to be contained in ordinary prisons!

"Where did all of the phasewater go?" Ves complained.

It would have been marvelous if the bones held significant concentrations of phasewater. He could have created all kinds of interesting products by using them as raw materials, from totems to biomech parts!

He honestly couldn't tell whether the phasewater decayed naturally over time or whether someone extracted it from the bones. He felt that the former was more likely as the bones did not exhibit any traces of rough handling.

As Ves became frustrated at how little these bones could tell him, he suddenly remembered that he might know a certain eldest sister who could derive more clues from this obvious monument of death!

Since Ves did not intend to channel Helena's power, it was a lot more straightforward to call forth her manifestation. He carried small totems of every design spirit on his person.

A gray-robed lady with a dark lotus flower in her hair appeared in front of Ves.

"Hello, brother. I learned from Goldie that you have fallen into another predicament again."

"That's an understatement. I'd love to chat, but I don't have all day. Can you give me your impression of these bones?"

"Hm? Oh sure."

Helena's intangible form curiously stared at the bones and even began to float in the air in order to study it from multiple angles. She remained quiet throughout her examination and withheld her conclusions until she became satisfied.

"Well?"

His sister adopted an intrigued expression. "Just like you, I cannot really read too much in this. I can tell you that this is an alien version of a funeral pyre. The aliens who these bones belonged to did not die at the same time, but their bodies and their flesh still remained relatively intact before they were apparently stacked together. Whoever burned the bodies did so with the intent of honoring the dead, more specifically one being in particular."

So his theory that this was a tombstone of sorts was close to the mark.

"Let me guess." Ves spoke up. "The body of the alien who this funeral pyre was dedicated to is located deep inside, right?"

"That is correct, but I can't read much from them as I only have access to a fraction of my power in this state. They are almost indistinguishable from the other bones as they are so pressed together against each other that it becomes hard to tell them apart. I am afraid you have to separate them in order for me to gain a good look."

Ves wondered if it would be a good use of his time to dismantle this funeral pyre and retrieve those particular set of bones.

Logically speaking, it didn't make sense for him to waste his time and effort into doing so, but he was too damn curious to leave this mystery unsolved.