Kill the Sun - Chapter 725

Volume 23: The Game Changes

Some meters away, Nick saw a being doing something to the biological machine.

One couldn't describe it as bipedal or quadrupedal.

It walked on several tentacles, which all had different lengths and widths.

However, the tentacles didn't feel like the tentacles of a squid or an octopus.

They looked quite clear and reminded Nick of the membranes of the biological machine.

If Nick had to associate the appearance and material of the tentacles with an animal, he would choose a weird insect.

The being was almost bereft of symmetry, with tentacles of different lengths sprouting out from seemingly random places.

The thickest ones were as thick as a human thigh, while the thinnest ones were a bit thinner than an average pinky.

All in all, Nick counted 17 tentacles, but he couldn't be sure that he found every tentacle.

As for the actual body of the being...

There wasn't really a body to speak of.

The tentacles all just ended in one knot with just a couple of basic sets of perceptive organs.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Some small antennae with fine hairs, some small holes that could make sense of sound and light, and some organs that seemed to measure things Nick couldn't immediately discern.

A big part of the sensory organs was also placed on the thickest and longest tentacles, giving the being a unique ability to surveil all its surroundings at all times.

At this moment, this weird tentacle thing had some of its tentacles put into a couple of holes in a big part of the biological machine.

Occasionally, some of the noises of the machine stopped, while new ones appeared.

'It's tinkering with the machine,' Nick thought. 'It looks like it's performing maintenance.'

All of this was already quite surprising, but there was something even more surprising.

'I can't feel any kind of danger coming from this thing,' Nick thought.

'I also can't sense any Zephyx coming from it.'

'Every Specter gives off some Zephyx, and even minions have to give off some Zephyx.'

'The fact that this thing isn't giving off any Zephyx means that it is either extremely powerful and good at hiding from my Zephyx sense, or it simply doesn't use Zephyx.'

'The fact that I'm also not feeling any danger is important as well.'

'If this were some kind of being made of Star Energy or Pure Energy, I would feel something.'

'But as far as I can tell, this thing is just purely biological and autonomous.'

'Even the biological machine has an obvious source of power, while the source of power of this thing seems to be just biochemical in nature.'

'It's just like an animal, a human, or a plant.'

'Yet, it shows extremely advanced knowledge by performing maintenance on such an insanely complicated machine.'

Nick's mind went wild when he realized what all of this meant.

'This is just a skilled engineer from a vastly more advanced civilization.'

'This thing is not a fighter.'

'It is essentially just a normal guy with a good education.'

'But it's not human!'

All of the clues Nick had gathered over his lifetime fused together to create one picture.

'That ruin was military in nature, and the only reason I could imagine this base highlighting the moon with such urgency is enemy presence.'

'Most likely, the aliens have a base on the moon from which they manage their little experiment.'

More and more things fit together in Nick's mind.

'When I compared the Sun to a glass bottle, I was closer than I thought.'

'It is literally just that, a very sophisticated and advanced bottle.'

'Most likely, the Sun isn't even really a Specter.'

'It's probably just another fancy machine!'

'It's like a fucking smart aquarium!'

'It keeps the water warm, oxygenated, cleans everything, and gets rid of pests.'

'Except, in our case, it creates a dense atmosphere of Prephyx, surveils humanity, and creates Specters that create human suffering to create Zephyx.'

'This also explains how the Ancient Ones lost with such insanely powerful weapons!'

'There was probably a war between the Ancient Ones and the aliens. Eventually, the humans lost, and the aliens came to Earth.'

'Instead of eradicating us or subjugating us, they made a glorified recycling center out of our planet.'

'Dump shit in; Take gold out.'

'But you can't just transform something with a low energy content into something with a high energy content.'

'You have to make up the difference in energy.'

'It sounds absurd to think about, but what if suffering is some kind of cost?'

'That sounds so ridiculous, but that may somehow work.'

'Our understanding of reality constantly evolves and changes. We might not notice it since it happens so slowly, but over hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of years, it is very evident.'

'What if our feelings actually have some kind of effect on physics?'

Nick had to do his best not to feel embarrassed about thinking something like that since it went against some accepted fundamentals of physics.

'I don't have another explanation, okay?!' Nick thought in annoyance as if he was trying to defend his hypothesis from an imaginary crowd of people who had just started sneering at his preposterous statement.

'The fact is that Zephyx gets created when Specters inflict suffering on humans. The workings of that are still unknown, but we know it works like that, and we can't argue with that fact.'

Nick looked at the alien tinkering with the machine.

His true enemy.

The Sun was only a weapon or a tool.

'Most likely, some powerful Specters know about the aliens and report to them.'

'In fact, maybe even the Champion directly reports to them.'

'They probably approached him and offered him a long and prosperous life at the peak of humanity in exchange for his services.'

'Among millions of humans, you are bound to find at least a couple of thousand that would accept that trade.'

'We're just farm animals.'

'All of humanity are just farm animals, eating shit just to shit out gold.'

Nick looked at the alien with hatred.

He really wanted to kill it!

Sadly, he knew that he couldn't.