Chapter 346. Alien (1/2)
The decahedron brought him to an unknown planet without warning. If that wasn't enough, his intervention had screwed up the transfer process, stranding Ves in a strange state.
His body, his gear and Lucky only partially existed on this jungle planet. He could breathe the air and stand on the ground, but when he tried to touch a tree his hands went right through as if he was a ghost.
”Am I turning into my mother?”
Ves quickly shook his head. This was no time for jokes. He performed some more experiments and found out that besides breathing the air, he could only interact with the environment in a couple of ways.
The most important observation was that he couldn't go through anything thicker than the leg of a mech. Anything bigger became an obstacle to him. On the other hand, it also allowed him to interact with the object.
”Lucky, come try to scratch this big old tree.”
The jungle was overgrown and ancient. It possessed a peculiar desolate aura that pinged his sixth sense. The trees had lived through countless standard years. Some of them even reached a thickness comparable to an office building.
When Lucky floated over and raked the bark of the tree with his energy claws, the tree had definitely become scratched.
Something changed at that moment.
Their surroundings whooshed as the giant tree trembled. The other trees began to sway as well.
The entire forest became agitated as if Lucky had affronted them all!
Lightning suddenly flashed between the trees. Thick bright lightning bolts interweaved the entire forest as if it had been turned into a lightning storm on the scale of a gas giant!
Just when Ves thought he would be fried to a crisp, the lightning bolts all harmlessly passed through his body and gear. Not even Lucky suffered a single burn.
The lightning storm only persisted for a couple of seconds before subsiding. Even though Ves got off unscathed, he still felt all of his hairs turn stuff.
He could have died just then!
The entire incident could have killed him if he hadn't entered a semi-corporeal state!
”These aren't regular trees. This isn't a terraformed planet.”
Ves became aware that he fell into the trap of relying on his preconceived notions. Just because an alien tree looked like a tree didn't mean it behaved the exact same way as a Terran-standard tree.
Humanity came across many cases of convergent evolution in the galaxy. Countless of habitable planets that revolved around yellow suns grew trees that grew green leaves in order to make the most out of photosynthesis.
That didn't mean that all of these trees evolved into passive, unmoving lifeforms.
Having learnt his lesson, Ves towed Lucky away towards a random direction. He wanted to get away from this frightening forest as fast as possible. Who knew if they retained a means to affect a semi-corporeal entity such as him in his current state.
Ves and Lucky ran for half an hour. The forest seemed endless, and the canopy barely allowed him to glimpse the pale blue sky above. Throughout his passage, he never came across a single native insect or wildlife.
Had the trees fried them all? Had the indigenous life forms evolved to instinctively avoid this forest?
The all-encompassing presence of the trees put a fair amount of mental pressure on Ves. These trees hadn't held back their might when one of them suffered a scratch. Even now, his mental senses perceived a subtle waveband in the air that carried a vague threatening flavor.
No outsiders allowed!
Thus, even if he didn't see an end to the forest, Ves still ran as if his life depended on it. Fortunately, his partially alien physique provided him with a boundless amount of energy. Although his internal energy cycle still hadn't fully recovered since meeting his mother, it still provided more than enough of a push to sustain his run.
”Even my Jutland organ is acting strangely!”
The organ responsible for most of the changes in his body became more active all of a sudden ever since he ended up on this unknown planet. Ves had the sense that it leeched some of the ambient energy emitted by the trees.
Ves did not like where this was going. His body already carried an excess amount of internal energy.
Thus, he continued to run in hopes of exiting the scary forest. In order to make sure he ran in a straight line, he utilized his hazard suit's navigational functions. Although it temporarily hadn't been able to make sense of the planet's magnetic field, it still featured other settings that could keep track of his route.
Even without his hazard suit, his comm offered similar functionality, so he wasn't helpless from the start.
After another half hour of running, Ves finally reached the edge of the forest. The trees abruptly grew less dense until they stopped growing entirely. Once he finally escaped the forest he stopped and caught his breath. Even with a strengthened body, he hadn't conditioned it to sustain an hour-long run.
After he straightened up, he beheld the dready brown landscape before him. A wide valley stretched before him. Unlike the forest behind him, the valley was completely barren of any growths. Neither plants or animals came into his view. While that relieved him somewhat, it also puzzled him. Why would the forest abruptly stop its growth in this direction?
He swept his gaze over at the hills and mountains and caught a single location that shone and sparkled with a brilliant luster. The location sat on top of a low hill a fair distance away from his current location.
To Ves, it looked like a sign of civilization.
”Finally! A potential clue!”
Ves had always kept his eye out for any signs that could explain his impromptu teleportation. The sudden appearance of the decahedron and its strange light show came too abruptly for him to draw any clues on what had happened.
Whatever the case, the decahedron definitely fulfilled some sort of purpose. It wouldn't dump him on a virgin planet without purpose. The act of transferring him from the Joe System to a completely different one with a yellow sun and a habitable planet must have used an enormous amount of power.