Chapter 352. Remains (1/2)

The aliens that built the crystal ruins always fascinated Ves. Through his continued proximity to the crystal city, he imagined an increasingly detailed picture of their race.

The crystal builders very likely evolved from a terrestrial planet not too divergent from the terran standard. This meant they likely looked like organisms from the terran animal kingdom. Throughout the galaxy, nature often led to the same solutions to the same problems. That was also why humanoid-looking aliens were remarkably common in the galaxy.

Some radical scientists even believed that some outside force had artificially inflated the prevalence of sexually dimorphic humanoids with two arms, two legs and a head. Of course, no one believed them. The most predominant theory was that the shift from walking on four limbs to walking on two limbs freed up the forelimbs for the usage of tools, which subsequently led to the birth of civilization.

These kinds of humanoid aliens made up a substantial amount of species in the galaxy.

The crystal builders happened to be a variant of the standard humanoid form. As Ves peered over the remarkably preserved corpse through the portal, he noted that it was as small as he imagined.

The tiny corpse possessed a weird face with cavities all around its uneven ball-like shape. Ves couldn't figure out which senses corresponded with any of the cavities. One hole might turn out to be the mouth while the other could be an ear.

Its torso possessed a natural hunch, which meant the alien likely walked around while holding a naturally bent posture akin to primates. Nevertheless, their arms were remarkably short and stubby even for their stature, as if they had atrophied through long generations of neglect. Their legs looked lean and normal, with much wider soles and more bend into them in order to stabilize their hunched posture.

”They look like little puppets.”

Another amusing thought sprang into his mind. He imagined a kid playing around with living crystal builders. The kid grabbed two of them with each hand and smashed them against each other, not caring at all how much he hurt the aliens.

Ves shook his head. He couldn't help but belittle these tiny aliens despite their impressive technological achievements. It was human instinct to treat any creature smaller than themselves as toys or pets.

Such assumptions could be dangerously negligent, as some species of small aliens possessed a lot of might.

”Lucky, don't eat the corpse. Bring it back to me!”

Fortunately, Lucky appeared to obey him without any fudging this time. As a gem cat, his favorite food consisted of mundane and exotic minerals. Actual flesh and blood hardly whetted his appetite. Lucky carefully grasped the corpse with his maw and flew back through the portal before depositing it onto his outstretched gauntlet.

”Curious.”

Ves had no idea how much time had passed since the alien had died, but it must have been millions of years at the very least. Why hadn't it decomposed?

Ves whipped up his trusty Vulcaneye and meticulously scanned the alien.

He quickly found out why the corpse hadn't broken down all these years. The alien had actually replaced his flesh with a flexible crystal substance. Certain cavities within the body must have hosted the brains and other vitally important organs. They had long been broken down into dust, leaving only an empty shell behind.

”Even for the crystal builders, this must be an extravagant procedure.”

He imagined this alien once held a very high status among his race. He might even be the master of the crystal garden.

While Ves would never in a million years wish to replace his body with a mechanical equivalent, he still found this corpse to be of utmost importance. It was a potential treasure in the eyes of those who pursued immortality through mechanising their bodily functions.

The supple, flexible crystals that bent when he lightly squeezed them with his gauntlet also held a lot of value. If Ves could derive its composition and reproduce it in his labs, he might be able to invent a new substance that would be ideal in armoring the joints and other parts of a mech that needed a of flexibility.

”It's likely to be extraordinarily expensive.”

From what Ves could gather from the readings of his Vulcaneye, the exotics used in the flexible crystal exceeded the ones used in the solid crystal ruins. Thus, any attempt to derive some value out of the flexible crystal could only be put off until his career had advanced.

Ves put away the crystal builder's corpse and ordered Lucky to dig up the crystal garden for any other treasures.

The portal opened and closed several times. For safety's sake, Ves always called back Lucky to his side of the portal before it closed. Although the crystal city's portal generator worked fine so far, Ves would be a fool to assume that ancient alien technology worked flawlessly after countless eons of neglect.

The crystal garden suffered a very different outcome from the crystal city and the crystal palace. The aliens abandoned the latter two, but the former still held a single powerful occupant. Perhaps a retinue of servants and bodyguards had accompanied the crystal cyborg to their deaths, but nothing of their existence remained in the ruined garden.

As Lucky dug out the uneven crystal structures in the garden, Ves studied the sample of the plantmeat that Lucky had also brought back. The Vulcaneye read out a bunch of data that only exobiologists would understand.

All he knew for certain was that it was actually still alive and that it possessed both plant-like and flesh-like traits. Considering that it had grown over the crystal garden and survived for who knew how long, Ves suspected that it might be some kind of bioweapon.

”A clash between two different alien civilizations perhaps?”

Besides the sample of plantmeat, Ves hadn't found any traces of the threat the crystal builders faced. All of their history was lost to time, and only their most enduring creations remained to prove their existence. So many races rose and fell in the galaxy that Ves hardly shed a tear to the passing of another race.

Humanity was a practical race. They only cared about the benefits. Most of the time, that meant exterminating any aliens they came across and loot the best parts of their technology for humanity's own use.

Ves merely thought of himself as someone who followed that trend as he instructed Lucky to crack open the crystal structures, which held a lot of cultural significance.

The crystal structures of the garden contained a lot more furniture, but none of them interested Ves. It wasn't until Lucky dug into the basement levels of the largest crystal structure that he managed to come across something remarkable.