Chapter 95: Unfinished
"Say it again?"
"There is no Volume 4! What can I do? I'm desperate too!" Garrod put Legend of Earth's Heroes - Volume 3 away and helplessly shrugged, "The author died in the World War, and the fourth volume was lost in the war before he could finish the manuscript."
"And what happened to all those people?" Ade looked eagerly at Garrod, "I'd very much like to know the later episodes!"
"Ask grandpa, he's the only one who lived through the World War." Garrod sent a shrug, "I did ask, anyway, he did not tell me, only that the doctor killed himself and we lost the fight. He refused to say anything else."
When Ade returned to the room, Ange looked at his empty hands and asked curiously, "Where is the fourth volume?"
"Garrod said that there is no fourth volume." He sat down on the edge of the bed, propped his elbows on his thighs, and looked down at the floor, "I wonder what happened to those people, and how Dr. Yang killed himself."
"Want to tell me about the story of the second and third volumes? You've been reading it yourself." Ange sat next to him. She didn't know why, but she particularly cared about this Dr. Yang's story, and even felt an inexplicable closeness to him, but her intuition told her not to talk to Ade about it.
"… fine." Ade organized the language, "The last time, you heard he joined the anti-terrorist organization Mithril, right? Mithril and Amalgam are ostensibly opposed to each other, but in fact, they had infiltrated each other deeply. Dr. Yang and Treize spent three years cleaning up the traitors in Mithril, destroyed Amalgam, and moved the headquarters of Mithril to the moon. At the end of the second volume, Yang found the name of his adopted daughter in the Amalgam headquarters, called … Hoshino Ruri."
"And that's it? The second volume is so short?" Ange was confused, "None of the new characters made an appearance?"
"Yang also met a girl in Mithril, from the combat department, called Teletha. Teletha is the same age as Ruri, twelve at the start of the second volume." He turned his head sheepishly, "Teletha was a brave and frank girl who had liked Yang since she was a child and confessed her love to him on her fifteenth birthday. Although Yang also liked Teletha, he also had a twisted desire for his adopted daughter, Ruri, over time. He didn't know how to choose, so he kept playing dumb to the two girls."
"Scum, exactly the same as a certain someone, I see." Ange nodded, "No, this someone had touched everything but just didn't dare to do the rest. He is even more excessive than Dr. Yang."
He ignored Ange's words and continued, "There is a kind of magical people in this world, called Whispered. They can receive technology from the future to their brains, called 'Black Technology'. Yang and Teresa are both Whispered, and the reason he was able to build the advanced Gundam is because of the Black Technology."
"Isn't that the same as cheating? Neither of which is knowledge gained through one's own efforts." Ange puffed out her cheeks in dissatisfaction, "You're much better than Yang at this point. At least, you got all your knowledge through study."
"The Black Technology that Whispered hear in their brains is actually broadcasted unconsciously through a girl called Kaname Chidori. Teletha and Little Kaname were all born at the same time, and a dangerous experiment happened to be conducted at the time of their birth. Little Kaname was influenced by the experiment to hear her own message thirty-five years later, and she in turn broadcast the message she heard to other Whispered. Most of Mithril's fight with Amalgam was actually a grab for Little Kaname, but of course, Dr. Yang won the grab in the end."
"You can't find a credible reason for this broken worldview, right?" Ange learned Ade's tone, "First of all, this dangerous experiment is too strange, what exactly it is? Secondly, isn't Dr. Yang six years older than Teletha? Why is he also a Whispered? Is it a protagonist's privilege?"
"There must be a way to explain it. Existence is reasonable, if you can't find the explanation, it only means that you don't have enough clues." Ade continued from where he left off, "These Whispered are somehow able to talk and share memories in a mental space called the 'Omni-Sphere'."
"Wait, isn't that like what you said about NT?"
"Yes. That's why Yang came up with the concept of NT. He thought the Whispered were inferior versions of NT and predicted that a real NT would definitely appear in the future, that the so-called Omni-Sphere was actually the medium of NT communication, and that the Black Technology was instead a side effect of some kind of accident. Now the prophecy has really come true, that is Tiffa. This should be the reason why everyone blindly trusts Tiffa, what they blindly trust is actually the already dead Dr. Yang."
"That's not right." Ange looked at him suspiciously, "Isn't it simply as if Dr. Yang originally knew about NT before he made a guess?"
"I'm not used to your IQ going up and down." Ade smoothly changed the topic, "Yang also invented a system called λ-DRIVER by using Black Technology, this system allows a person's spiritual power to affect physical reality. Although its requirements to the pilot are very high, the effect is extremely powerful. The Gundams equipped with λ-DRIVER were called by him third-generation machines."
"Will affects reality?" Ange's eyes went wide, "That's too much bullshit!"
"Dr. Yang himself thinks it's bullshit, obviously being the creator of the λ-DRIVER, but shouting 'I can't find a credible reason for this broken worldview' every day. " Ade shook his head empathetically, "Finally, he came up with the hypothesis that the world was missing a higher life form called angel, and that the λ-DRIVER was actually an amplifier of AT field."
Ange looked confused, "I don't understand it at all."
"So neither he nor I, none of us can explain the worldview alone." Ade clenched his fist, "But the two worlds added up can make up a complete worldview."
"Who understands it?" Ange wrung him unhappily, "I want to hear the story, where are the new characters? Where are the new plots?"
"Well, Dr. Yang found an ACE named Sousuke Sagara, and then introduced him to be Little Kaname's boyfriend."
"Why is it this routine again? Brainwashing people, helping people find boyfriends and girlfriends." Ange was indignant, "He himself hadn't solved his problem with Teletha and Ruri, why did he have so much free time to care about other people's relationship problems?"
"By the way, there is another important person, Teletha's brother, named Leonard, who is also a Whispered." He hurriedly diverted Ange's attention, "This Leonard was hurt by his own mother when he was a child, and later joined Amalgam, in short, to take revenge on society. After Amalgam was extinguished, Dr. Yang could not bear to kill Teresa's brother, and used a means similar to NT resonance to force a conversation with Leonard, resulting in accidental overexertion that turned Leonard gay."
"Gay?" Ange was shocked, "Doesn't that become a love triangle between the Teresa siblings and Dr. Yang? No, plus Ruri, is it a quadrangular love? Is this story that exciting?"
"There's something even more exciting, Dr. Yang befriended a researcher in Mithril's research department, and they quickly became close friends." Ade narrowed his eyes, "That researcher's name is Embryo."
Ange's jaw dropped.
"The two are very close and talk about everything. Embryo praised Yang 'you literally have a whole world in your head', praised Yang's various brainstorms, and was able to have thoughts and feedback that no one else could do at all. Yang also felt happy to share his views on everything about humans, society, and life with Embryo."
"Embryo the Great Demon King…" Ange read in a low voice.
"So moving on to the third volume, after discovering Ruri's true identity, Dr. Yang decided to explore Mars. On Mars, he discovered a rare substance called Chulip crystal, which contains extremely dense energy and radiation inside and can even interfere with bosons to slightly distort time." He paused, "I have a hunch that this is the thing responsible for the backstabbing in this worldview."
"What's a boson? Is it edible?"
Ade knocked her head and continued, "Dr. Yang tried to use the Chulip crystal to create a space jump device, yet he found that he couldn't find boson jumps in the Black Technology. So he came up with the idea that since the Whispered hear the broadcast thirty-five years later, thirty-five years later they would be hearing the broadcast seventy years later. If the mental power is strong enough, can it change listening to forcible questioning and keep pursuing to the infinite future? In order to verify his conjecture, Teletha volunteered to be the experiment."
"Why didn't he do it himself?" Ange protested with dissatisfaction, "It's too much to use a woman as an experiment at a time like this!"
"He misjudged the danger of the experiment before he rashly agreed to Teletha's proposal. His guess proved to be correct, as long as the spiritual power was strong enough, it was indeed possible to break through the thirty-five-year limit. However, each breakthrough was accompanied by a huge consumption of vitality and willpower, and Teletha was on the verge of a mental breakdown when she saw only a little of the boson jumping device, and the experiment was forced to be aborted."
Ange pouted, "Teletha is so pitiable…"
"Dr. Yang started researching on the basis of the knowledge Tletha found, but the technology gap was unbridgeable and the developed boson jumping device was very restrictive. First of all, the boson stance unfolds strangely slow, secondly, it requires huge computing resources and a large number of Chulip crystal, which made the device impossible to be miniaturized, and finally, the jump must be assisted by a character called 'Jumper' for coordinate positioning, and the Jumper has a great need for talent."
"Wait, let me guess." Ange interrupted him, "The doctor found a Jumper with superb talent, and after brainwashing him, the Jumper became his worshipper, so the doctor found a girlfriend for him by hand."
"You've learned to answer in advance!" Ade looked at her in amazement, "But wrong about one thing, the one Dr. Yang found was a young couple, both husband and wife are the best jumpers. The husband was called Tenkawa Akito and the wife was called Yurika Misumaru. After that, Dr. Yang built a bunch of warships with strange names, all fitted with boson jumping devices. Yurika was the captain of the Wonder Conch, and Akito drove Gundam."
"All fitted?" Ange froze and suddenly shouted out, "So this ship we're on now is capable of space jumps?!"
"Yes, but it can't use this function without the help of an A-class Jumper." Ade thought about it, "I suspect Embryo holds some kind of more advanced boson jumping device, Villkiss should be his thing, and then somehow Yang got his hands on it, tried to crack it without success. We should have inadvertently triggered the boson jump at that time, so we came to this world."
"Oh!" Ange suddenly realized, "That strange message in Villkiss was left by Dr. Yang!"
"The odds are that's it." Ade nodded, "Then I'll continue. Most of the content in the third volume is about the Doctor, Teletha, and Ruri's love comedy. The second half of the book suddenly comes out with a bunch of Jovians attacking Martians, but the Doctor is fully prepared and Treize fights back with a bunch of ACEs. The war lasted for two years, and finally, humans were victorious and reached a peace agreement with the other side's leader."
"And where did the Jovians come from?" Ange asked in disbelief, "That's too sudden, isn't it?"
"Didn't the first volume say that the Martian colonization failed?" Ange remembered with a "hmm", "In fact, the first batch of Martian immigrants were persecuted and fled to Jupiter, but the Earth Federation deleted the relevant records, so no one knows. These Jovians later returned to take revenge, but unfortunately, the revenge failed, and the solar system was finally at peace by this point."
"So another two years passed? Let me do the math." Ange looked down and wiggled her fingers, "Dr. Yang is twenty-three, Ruri and Teletha are seventeen, and he's still playing dumb?"
"It's complicated, you can't do the math like that." Ade said squarely, "Nominally, Ruri is the doctor's daughter, the doctor didn't dare to show his twisted feelings for Ruri, but Ruri and Teletha are at the same age, if he accepted Teletha, does it mean he can be with Ruri too?"
"You do not need to explain, scum's sophistry, you and Dr. Yang seem to be able to understand each other." Ange put on an indifferent face, "He likes them both and dares not speak it out, so he acted like a timid turtle. Did you run to the island and hide for a similar reason?"
"What do you mean by hiding? I told you, I fell from the sky after pushing the satellite!"
"Well, well, pushing the satellite, well." Ange nodded expressionlessly, "Friday is just so stupid, she almost believed even that. Go on, end of the story?"
"At the end of the story, Embryo says to Dr. Yang, 'Look, this world is just so ugly, dirty and irredeemable, destroy it with me and create a new world, let's create your ideal human and society.' Dr. Yang, after repeatedly confirming that he was not joking, angrily said, 'I can finally retire, and you tell me to do this? Go play yourself'. So Embryo decided to do it alone, challenging all humans, and the world war began."
"And then what?" Ange asked with interest, "And then what happened?"
"There is no then, I said at the beginning. The author died before he finished the fourth volume." Ade shrugged his shoulders for the second time today, "I do not know what happened afterward, anyway, humans lost the war, Yang committed suicide, and now this earth has become this way. According to Garrod, the pollution of the Earth is because Embryo somehow blasted the Chulip crystal on the surface, releasing the radiation and energy inside, making it impossible for humans to survive."
"Didn't Embryo and Dr. Yang turn out to be good friends? Why did they turn out to be like this?" Ange was unexpectedly a bit melancholy, "So he really destroyed the world, what happened to Ruri and Teletha after that?"
After that, Iserlohn continued its journey but did not meet any other survivors. In fact, everything was just routine, and them finding Ade was an accident. A week later, everyone finally returned to the so-called colony.
The battleship was some distance away from the colony when Ade saw something flying in the sky from afar, and Ange nervously grabbed his finger and pointed at the small black dot in the sky and shouted, "Dragons! There are dragons here! Where's Villkiss? I--"
People around looked over in confusion, Ade quickly covered her mouth and whispered in her ear, "Shhh! Pretend you don't know the dragons and act like you're seeing them for the first time no matter what you see or hear, got it?"
Watching Ange nod vigorously, Ade then released his hand. In this instant, he understood that he still had to face TurnX someday. Since the dragon has a way to go over here, he must also have a way to go back, but what can he do after he goes back?
At this point, Garrod with Tiffa came up and explained, "Little brother, you must be scared, right? I didn't tell you this to give you a surprise, they're real dragons in the sky! The first time I saw it, I was also scared!"
"What's going on?" Ade squeezed Ange's hand, signaling her not to talk too much, "I really 'saw' dragons for the first time."
"These dragons are actually genetically modified people." Garrod spoke out, "Anyway, it's Black Technology, no one can explain it. Some survivors will volunteer to be transformed into dragons, and after they become dragons they can absorb the radiation and energy of the Chulip crystal, gradually transforming the environment back to a human habitable appearance. So this whole colony was constructed by everyone with their lives, how's that? They are great, right?!"
"Ange, you don't feel well, how about going to your room and resting for a while?" Ade patted the young girl's back and smiled shyly at Garrod and Tiffa. Ange dutifully left, "Garrod, you said Black Technology? So the technology to change humans into dragons was found by the Whispered?"
"The one who took out the dragon changing technology is the last holder of the Black Technology, called Kaname Chidori." Garrod's mood became a little down, "Little brother, you should know if you have read the book, this is not a technology that can be developed within thirty-five years, so she died after leaving this technology behind due to overdrawing her life force."
"Oh." Although he had guessed that the characters in the story would end up like this, hearing it in person still made Ade have some mixed feelings. After a few more casual conversations, he said goodbye to Garrod and returned to his room to pack his things and prepare to leave the ship.
"Ade?" Ange sat on the bed and looked up at him with a helpless face, "I, I've been killing people, and killing all the good people who sacrificed themselves to save the world …"
"It's not your fault." Ade sat next to her and touched her head, "You are blinded by Embryo to do this kind of thing, to live to do this kind of thing. The killings should be counted on Embryo, not you."
"You've used this theory once, it's too perfunctory." Ange pushed his hand away and leaned on him, her body still slightly trembling, "I can't accept it. Use something new to persuade me."
"It's not like you can't use it after you've used it once. You have to refute this theory before I'll get a new one." Ade put his arm around her shoulders, "Start refuting it, I'll refute you too, time to show your intelligence."
"Hey, you're comforting me, right? Not bullying me, are you?" Ange squirmed restlessly, "I don't care, I won't accept this comfort anyway. You rethink, tell me before you go to bed at night, if you can't think of one, you'll sleep on the floor."
Hearing her say so, Ade let go of her relieved, and began to pack his things.
An hour later, the two arrived at a tall building in the center of the colony, led by Garrod and Tiffa. The colony had many buildings and facilities left over from before the war that had been repurposed after renovation, like the one they were in. Here they met an old man. Ade doesn't know how old the old man actually was, but he looked to have a lot of stories in his eyes.
"Let me introduce to you, this is our grandpa." Garrod was rarely honest in front of the old man, "Grandpa is the most powerful person we have here, whether you can stay or not depends on what grandpa says."
The old man in front of Ade wearing a Chinese tunic suit and has a standard Asian face. Ade's heart thumped and asked in Chinese, "Hello, old gentleman, may I ask your name?"
"Oh?" A streak of light flashed through the old man's eyes and he replied in standard Chinese, "You can call me Chang Wufei."
