Chapter 6209: Soul Machine Utopia (76)

Bat Cat was stunned too. But what shocked him wasn’t that Shuggos had something to do with Iron Man. He asked, “You actually recognize the sound of Iron Man’s armor deploying?”

Shiller looked at him as well. “What’s so strange about that? Haven’t you heard it?”

“His armor deployment has no sound.” Bat Cat said, “When I saw Iron Man suit up in Battleworld, there was literally no sound. Where did you hear the noise of his Mecha?”

“How could it be silent?” Shiller was a bit puzzled. “Putting on such a big piece of Battle Armor, there has to be some friction noise from the Transformation, right?”

Bat Cat was a bit helpless. “If I make a set of Battle Armor, the first thing I’d do is try to reduce the sound during Transformation as much as possible, otherwise in a dangerous environment you’d be easily discovered by the enemy, and in a fight people could use the sound to Prediction your moves.”

Shiller froze. He thought back, and realized that Stark’s later armors really did deploy without sound—no sound at all. So where did his impression of that armor Transformation noise come from?

Shiller carefully recalled, then realized it was in the lab. When Stark was debugging his Mecha in his own lab, there would be noise, and it was loud—sometimes it even ended in crackling explosions.

There was a period of time when he was constantly in Stark’s lab screwing in light bulbs, which made him very familiar with all sorts of Transformation noises during Battle Armor test phases. So the moment Shuggos made that kind of racket, he immediately remembered.

“Looks like you know him very well.” Bat Cat obviously had guessed what was going on. “I suppose if anyone knows best what Bat Equipment sounds like when it transforms, that would be Robin Cat.”

Shiller sighed. He looked at Bat Cat and said, “I already felt something was off before…”

He told Bat Cat in detail about what had happened earlier on the ship. The first time he saw the true body of Shuggos, he had a feeling of déjà vu, but back then he thought it was because he associated it with Venom.

The blob-like black, rotten-mud Creature Shiller was most familiar with was Venom, and Venom was very likely created with Shuggos as its inspiration. It wasn’t strange that the two were similar, so Shiller didn’t think much of it.

But now it seemed that Shuggos actually resembled more the blood cell computer they had seen in the cube before, those black liquids. Venom is much thicker than those two, closer to a solid, so the gap between them is still quite large.

Bat Cat also fell into deep thought, wondering what was going on. He said, “The Ancient Ones kept repeating that some of them contacted Gods from outside their domain. I originally thought it might be Nya, but now—could it have been Tony Stark?”

Shiller nodded and said, “It’s possible. After all, time in the Deep in the Stars and in the Material World doesn’t line up. Even hundreds of millions of years ago, it’s possible to contact Iron Man. But then, why would Iron Man send Shuggos to wipe them out?”

Bat Cat shook his head; he didn’t know either. It clearly wasn’t because Iron Man had fallen into Madness—if he can build computers in the Outer God world, he clearly has his reason, and it’s unlikely he’d suddenly make a Monster to bite people.

Moreover, the Ancient One civilization can be called a rarity in the Cthulhu Mythos Universe, one of the most technologically advanced Races, even the hope of the Order Creature. Someone like Iron Man would definitely feel closer to them, not side with the Outer God. So Shuggos, which is connected to him, has no reason at all to carry out Carnage on the Ancient Ones.

Obviously, the story as told from the Ancient Ones’ perspective is incomplete; there are still hidden details that even they don’t know. This might be tied to the truth behind this Genocide, and they have to find a way to figure it out.

After the battle ended, Bat Cat and Shiller drove that crab back to the shore. The Ancient Ones were in the sea, raising their tentacles high as if in celebration. When they saw them driving over, they curiously gathered around, carefully examining the vehicle from top to bottom.

Shiller seemed to understand a bit. Actually, they had never seen this kind of vehicle—or rather, not in this form. After all, this group of Ancient Ones went extinct over two hundred million years ago, and the city inside the Antarctic Mountains may have been rebuilt into its current state only after they died. Many technological items were also invented after their death.

To use the Human race as an analogy, it’s like Middle Ages people suddenly seeing Stark’s Flying Car—or the reverse, modern people suddenly seeing wooden oxen and flowing horses.

Hundreds of millions of years ago, the Ancient Ones’ civilization was more advanced, and their bodies were stronger. They had no need to make such small vehicles—they could jump higher than this thing drives. If a person’s running speed far exceeds a sports car, there’s no need to build cars. These World War I veterans might even think this was made by Humans.

Sure enough, they began using their tentacles in the sea to spell out words: “Your stuff is very similar to ours, very beautiful.”

This car really does line up with the Ancient Ones’ aesthetics. On the one hand, since they made it, there’s no reason to deliberately make it ugly; on the other, they themselves are all tentacles, so of course they feel a natural fondness for multi-legged creatures.

Shiller almost feels embarrassed to say it, but this is not something the Human race could build. Bat Cat still tells them the truth though. The Ancient Ones are even more shocked; this time they don’t just crowd around to watch, they start fiddling with the car using their tentacles, constantly buzzing to each other as they communicate.

But very soon, their tentacles droop, looking a bit sad, and they spell out a few words with their tentacles: “They are very weak, very slow, about to die, degenerated, terrible.”

Shiller thinks back: when they found the sailor’s corpse, they also found the body of a small Ancient One, clearly killed by the Human race. And the Human race was injured at the time too, must have fought back on the verge of death. Even so, they still managed to take one down, which shows how weak that Ancient One had become.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the few Ancient Ones in front of them now couldn’t possibly be pierced by Human firearms; that shell of theirs can tank thousands of meters of seawater pressure. Just now the Shuggos had been wildly flailing their tentacles and could only smack them back a few steps, without breaking their defense.

Let alone those smaller-bodied Ancient Ones, who have no power to fight back against the Shuggos at all and are basically getting chased and beaten. Yet these much older Ancient Ones can hold their own against the Shuggos in the ocean.

Even though hundreds of millions of years lie between them, for a long-lived Race like this, that rate of degeneration is already absurdly fast. This isn’t “Humans degenerating into Monkeys”; it’s like degenerating from the Human race back into sarcopterygian fish in just a few years. Their very form of life has fundamentally changed.

“We go together.” The Ancient Ones gesture again. “Now.”

They look extremely full of anxiety. So Shiller pilots the car, raises the car’s tentacles, gently touches the outer shell of their bodies, then straightens out those tentacles that had gotten tangled together. The Ancient Ones are very amazed by his actions, because this is not just a greeting, it’s more like comfort—an emotional expression.

No other lifeform has ever done anything like this to them before. After all, on Earth all those demons and ghosts are in “fight fight fight kill kill kill” mode every day; the moment they make eye contact it’s auto-match, start brawling, and they won’t stop until the ground is carpeted with corpses. Truly the Solar System running a nested trap, tricking the Ancient Ones right onto the scaffold.

Suddenly encountering someone as gentle as Shiller, if the Ancient Ones had tear ducts they’d probably be crying by now. This really is “bad bamboo produces good shoots”: on a wretched little planet like this, a species capable of resonating emotionally with them actually evolved. The Human race really is a beneficial insect.

Shiller is also watching their reactions. The Ancient Ones are not like the Aliens of the Three Great Empires at all. Among the Three Great Empires, aside from the Shi’ar Empire still having a bit of humanity, the other two are pure high-tech low-emotion—or rather, no emotion at all—Military State Robots.

This is a chronic illness that crops up in many High-level Civilizations across the cosmos. To make their main Race stronger, they use all kinds of methods to amplify strengths and remove weaknesses. Emotions are considered an unstable factor, so many Races suppress and excise them through gene-editing technologies or other means.

Once a few powerful civilizations commit to this path, the others can only follow. Some do it to imitate; some are forced to, for the sake of competition. So in the interstellar civilizations of the cosmos Shiller lives in, many people are half-alive half-dead; even if they do have feelings, they rarely express them directly.

But the Ancient Ones are obviously a Race with extremely rich emotions, just like the Human race, with abundant body language to convey their feelings. Humans wear their joy and sorrow on their faces; they wear it on their tentacles. And they’re very good at Empathy, fully able to understand the emotions that other creatures show toward them.

The big Squids practically immediately treat this little car and the cat inside like treasure. One after another they crowd around, constantly stroking the glass of the cockpit with their tentacles. You can tell they really want to pet the cat, but conditions in the water won’t let them, so they can only circle the cockpit nonstop.

But Shiller and the others don’t stay in the water for long and soon head ashore. They need to pick up the Professors, then get ready to head into the mountains together with the Ancient Ones.

Yet shockingly, the moment they reach the base, they see Reck standing outside the tent, seemingly in the middle of a conversation with Professor Dale.

Professor Dale knows what happened on the ship, so how could he be talking to the Origin Shugos? Shiller’s fur stands on end again. Bat Cat, however, looks much calmer; he just keeps operating the car while saying, “This Shuggos that can turn into a Human form is obviously not simple. If they don’t come looking for me, I’ll go looking for him. He definitely knows something.”

Shiller gradually calms down. He realizes that this Shuggos, so intent on squeezing into the expedition team, isn’t trying to wipe out the whole team. In the original story he might not have killed anyone on his own initiative; he only dissected the Ancient Ones they dug up, and later the Ancient Ones killed the others in retaliation. His target has always been the Ancient Ones, not the Human race.

Shiller had originally thought he was approaching the expedition so he could get close to the Ancient Ones via Human hands. But he’s already found the Ancient Ones before—so why is he coming to the Human race again now?

Maybe, just like Bat Cat says, he can be communicated with, and he’s coming to the Human race with a purpose. Maybe from his mouth they can learn more of the truth behind the Shuggos rebellion war that took place hundreds of millions of years ago.