Chapter 175: Foreign Identities
Late Morning - Mid Summer : Deep Ocean (West of Central Sirathian Mountains)
Quickly moving around the structure to look at the symbols and find a way inside, I almost immediately found what looked like it could be an entrance facing the open ocean. -But how do I open it?-
Not wanting to break it, I swam up to the closed entrance and looked inside the material with my aura, but before I could find anything, arge tform started extending out of the building.
-Do I stand on this?- Setting myself down on the tform, I expected the building to sink or shake slightly, but it didn''t budge. -I guess I''m underestimating whoever built this..-
As I idly thought to myself, a small ck tube extended from the structure.
"???????????????????????? ?????????????????." A somewhat robotic yet glitchy and distorted voice came from it, speaking anguage thatcked a single strand of familiarity.
-Does it want me to touch it?- Reluctantly reaching up to it, I tapped my nail against it.
"???????????????????????????? ??????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????." It spoke again before pausing for a moment.
-Oh sweet, that must have been what it wanted...-"?n???? M?n?." My ever-building excitement immediately halted after hearing the distorted voice again, this time speaking anguage I could actually recognize. -The ancient draconguage?- It was an ancient dialect used by dragons before and during Ragnarok, back when dragons casually dominated the world.
To describe it quickly, it was a more noble, formal, and slightly convoluted dialect, simr to what people on earth thought dragons would talk.
"?n???? M?n?." My thoughts were quickly cut off by the voice repeating itself.
-Right, I should probably do it before it does something else...- Trying not to overthink things too much, I injected mana into the sensor until it closed itself off and retracted back into the structure.
Before I knew it, a different yet all too familiar monotone voice radiated from within my head.
{"Authorities: -Unknown Error-
-Update Impossible-
-Attempting to Connect to Servers-
Unable to Connect: Low Power Mode Initiated: Please Fully Charge Batteries in Order to Attempt Long Range Reconnect
-Ignoring Remaining ''Non-Critical'' Errors-
-Granting Temporary Authorities-
Authorities: Approved
Wee to Laboratory 4856A"}
-This is aboratory?! For what?!- I felt unusually deep anxiety quickly fill my stomach as the doors opened to reveal therge ship docking area.
There was a thickyer of salt buildup on the floor, but it was being cleaned up and pushed outside as I walked in.
Quickly scanning the room, I noticed several doors, each with unknown symbols above them, but one door was significantly taller than the rest and just so happened to be perfectly lined up with the entrance.
As I got close and the door opened though, I finally realized it was still too small for my dragon form and had to create a bubble around myself. -I need to be extra careful with my humanoid form around this kind of water pressure...-
Once I finished transforming though, I quickly got distracted by a few changes.
-Did all these changes really happen since I went underwater?- I looked to be a tad taller with the scales that used to be isted on my back now visible on my arms and the base of my neck, but most noticeable of all, there were nubs of dragon horns poking through my hair right next to my wolf ears. -There''s no way I just didn''t notice those before, right?-
Although I found it a bit weird for them to pop up out of the blue, I decided not to question it just yet. -Those questions can be saved forter…-
Continuing into the building and walking through an extremely strong vacuum barrier, I came into a long andpletely dry hallway with pure white walls and floors.
The hall was quite long but was also lined with doors I could open by tapping a half-working panel.
The inside of each room had dozens of ss cases showcasing anything from fossils to ''preserved'' samples of now rotted flesh or eggs, but the most amazing thing of all, each case had a panel, some working, some not, with tons of text and information on them.
Being able to immediately recognize the mathematics and chemical forms among the information, I quickly figured out how to read the more scientific information, but that was still far from enough to actually learn thenguage or understand everything on the panels. -For now, I''ll just memorize everything and sort through itter..-
Finally getting into a systematic rhythm of memorization, I started to pick up the pace moving through rooms, only sometimes taking extra time to look at certain specimens.
But it didn''t take long for me to reach thest door.
-The final one, huh?- Lightly tapping the touch panel on therge double door a few times, I finally heard the quiet click of a lock before the doors opened to reveal a dark room.
The room was simply massive, spanning nearly 150 meters in every direction, and was packed full of scientific instruments andputer screens, but only a single one of them was actually lit. -To think aputer is still working when even their basic touch sensors for doors were faulty...-
Walking up to it, I noticed it disyed a slightly broken lock screen with several visible glitches. -As long as it works a little… Just maybe..-
Grabbing hold of a ball I assumed was the mouse, I quickly learned how to move around the cursor and click, but I was still at a loss for how to get past the lock screen.
-Maybe this scanner will do something..- Looking at a small, thumb-sized scanner, I noticed it looked simr to the one I saw outside and injected a bit of mana into it.
Almost immediately, the screen updated to show a window with thousands of little boxes, each showing a different, unrecognizablenguage. -Holy sh*t..-
Scrolling through the list to try and find something I could recognize, I quickly came across Ancient Draconic and selected it.
Almost instantly, the screen updated again with a small box appearing.
''Language Change Confirmation: Proceed - Return (10.. 9.. 8..)''
The phrasing was a bit odd since it was the old dialect, but the most important thing was that I could understand it.
I felt a deep and almost limitless excitement as I clicked ''Proceed'' and was met with a desktop full of icons I could actually understand the names of, but it did notst long.
Almost immediately, countless errors popped up on the screen.
(disy text)
''-Offline Mode Initiated-
-Current Emergencies: Low Charge: 0.07% - Security: Disabled - Life-Scans: Disabled - Server Connection: Disconnected''
Quickly realizing I likely had less time than I thought, I moved the warnings to the side and scrolled through the innumerable icons to find helpful information about this ce, but only after digging through thousands of files rted to research did I find a gold nugget.
‘Trantion Bank’
Opening it in a rush, I was met with a list of about 40nguages, each being the name of an ancient dialect from thousands of years ago, and immediately picked Ancient Draconic, thenguage I knew best among them.
Inside that folder, I was met with a long document detailing how the ancient draconguage worked in the foreignnguage''s terms.
In short, it was a trantion dictionary. -I can actually learn thenguage!-
Almost immediately, my focus was ripped away from my surroundings and poured into learning thenguage.
Before I knew it, several hours had passed and I had memorized the entire file.
-For such aplicatednguage.. it''s really efficient...- Thenguage contained an unreasonable amount of different words with 35 different base ''letters'', yet somehow thatplexity wasn''t even slightly noticeable when reading or writing. Words each had their own concise meanings and although it made learning it more time-consuming, once everything was memorized, the beauty of thenguage came to light.
-To think anguage that doesn''t allow incorrect interpretation can exist..-