Chapter 263: Major Discovery
A frenzied, feverish atmosphere swept through the dark cavern...
Jason was buzzing with adrenaline. The prospect of uncovering more ancient ruins buried beneath their feet filled him with an irresistible urge to dig...
These grown, highly educated men were acting like they’d all taken a massive dose of combat stimulants! It was as if they had just stumbled upon a literal goldmine and couldn’t dig fast enough.
They excavated frantically, panting heavily, their faces flushed with exertion. They worked relentlessly for two or three hours until their powered armor’s servos began to whine and they were physically exhausted.
Sure enough, the deeper they dug, the more artifacts they unearthed!
They found an assortment of bizarre, fossilized objects. For now, they simply collected them without stopping to analyze.
"Alright... alright, everyone! Let’s pack it in. We’re heading back!"
Jason finally called the halt, his back aching from the sheer physical labor of digging in heavy armor.
He looked at the exhausted but reluctant team, checking the mission clock on his HUD; three hours had already passed. He guessed the reptilian natives waiting outside the radiation zone were probably getting impatient.
This archaeological site was simply too massive. In three hours of back-breaking labor, they had only managed to excavate a fraction of what appeared to be a very ordinary, suburban house. The vast majority of the city was likely buried hundreds of meters deeper inside the extinct volcano!
It was physically impossible for twenty men to excavate a city by hand... Once Jason’s adrenaline cooled, the logical reality set in.
The scale of this project was monumental; they needed industrial heavy-duty excavators!
Hearing Jason’s order, the team reluctantly stood up. They had recovered over a dozen strange pieces of fossilized scrap. From their geometric shapes, a few could be vaguely identified as complex circuit boards, while others were heavily oxidized metal lumps of unknown origin.
But the Senior Scientists packaged the muddy rocks into their secure lockboxes with extreme care, treating them like the most precious treasures in the universe!
It wasn’t just Jason; every single member of the team felt a chaotic mix of excitement, burning curiosity, and profound doubt.
The mystery of the "three metal nuts" had finally been solved: they were scavenged relics left behind by a lost, highly advanced technological civilization. However, this answer immediately plunged humanity into an even deeper, more terrifying mystery.
What was the true technological ceiling of this lost civilization? Why did they go extinct? And... why was this specific sector flooded with lethal nuclear radiation?
Jason frowned, his mind racing as scattered clues, logical deductions, and tactical scenarios flashed behind his eyes.
Did they annihilate themselves in a global nuclear war?
That seemed highly unlikely... Even in the event of a total nuclear exchange, it was virtually impossible to eradicate every single member of a civilization, right? A percentage of the population, hiding in deep bunkers, would inevitably survive.
Did the survivors devolve over millions of years into the primitive lizardmen?
Biologically, that possibility was astronomically low...
Of course, there was a third, much darker possibility: they were systematically exterminated by a vastly superior interstellar empire, leaving absolutely no survivors. It was entirely possible for a Type-II or Type-III civilization to surgically and completely annihilate a lower-tier civilization.
In that scenario, the primitive lizardmen were simply a separate, newly evolved sentient species that arose millions of years later, completely unrelated to the lost civilization.
Ultimately, without concrete empirical evidence, everything remained pure speculation!
"Move out! Let’s get back to the surface!"
Jason took one last, lingering look at the excavation trench before taking point and leading the squad out of the cursed zone.
The team followed him out, their faces practically pouting with reluctance. However, they were smart enough to know that twenty men with their bare hands couldn’t dig up an entire city.
The squad was buzzing with exhilaration; every cell in their bodies was practically vibrating with anticipation. They couldn’t wait to mobilize the Federation’s heavy engineering corps and tear this mountain open!
The Senior Scientists were equally desperate to return to base and announce this mind-shattering, paradigm-shifting discovery to the High Council!
Outside the radiation zone, the seven native guides were indeed getting anxious. They were genuinely terrified that the "Messengers of the Gods" had fallen victim to the demonic curse...
They let out massive, collective sighs of relief when Jason and the armored squad finally emerged from the dark.
"Marcus, take a small detail and escort the native guides back to their village via the dropship. The rest of us are heading straight back to Central Command on The Ark!" Jason ordered, his voice clipped with impatience.
"Yes, sir! Understood!"
Marcus and his designated Marines threw crisp salutes and boarded the Aegis-class dropship, herding the deeply confused native guides along with them.
The rest was simple...
When the expedition team reported back, a bombshell even larger than the discovery of the reptilian natives detonated across The Ark! The entire Federation felt like they had been struck by lightning, and public morale skyrocketed!
Nyx... actually harbored the ruins of a high-tech civilization! And they were extinct!
The immediate collective thought of the Federation’s engineering and science divisions was: "We get to scavenge again!"
Once again, they could jumpstart their tech tree by reverse-engineering alien technology!
The initial logistical setup was always the hardest part. After organizing the preliminary command structures, Jason began aggressively delegating the operation into three distinct, high-priority objectives.
First: The development and integration of the indigenous workforce.
Following intense debates among the sociologists, the High Council agreed that the greatest immediate value of the reptilian natives was their labor potential.
Naturally, this didn’t mean manual, back-breaking labor, it meant cognitive labor.
Based on the preliminary linguistic and behavioral data, the average IQ of the lizardmen sat roughly between 60 and 70, though exceptional individuals might hit 100, aligning with an average human baseline.
If these natives could truly be educated and their cognitive potential unlocked, the Federation had to utilize them. After all, the human population was dangerously small, and even with aggressive birth incentives, they couldn’t drastically expand their workforce in the short term.
Therefore, tasks requiring basic cognitive oversight such as monitoring automated machinery, managing localized logistics, or even performing delicate, manual excavation at archaeological sites, could be handed over to the lizardmen, provided they could be trained...
According to demographic models run by the Senior Scientists, Nyx likely housed hundreds of other native villages. A planet of this size had to support a population of at least a million, possibly tens of millions, of lizardmen!
Due to their primitive cultural evolution, their cognitive abilities couldn’t just jump to a modern standard overnight. They could only be assigned simple, repetitive tasks. But even automating the simplest jobs would free up thousands of highly educated human engineers for more critical work.
Because the natives were still in a state of absolute ignorance, ideological control was incredibly simple, making rebellion practically impossible in the short term. Providing them with stable thermal heating and synthesized food was more than enough to ensure their absolute, fanatical loyalty.
This integration program was still in its absolute infancy. First, the Federation needed to fully map their language, then peacefully recruit scattered native tribes, carefully selecting the most intelligent individuals for the first phase of the education program...
The second major objective: The rapid construction of the Arctic Mining Base!
Whenever Jason reviewed the daily completion reports for the Arctic base, he felt a profound sense of relief. While logistical infrastructure work was tedious, it was the absolute lifeblood of the colony. All Federation industrial expansion required a massive, uninterrupted supply of minerals and energy. The raw materials salvaged from The Ark were nearly depleted; they desperately needed the Arctic mines operational.
Fortunately, construction was proceeding flawlessly. Massive industrial complexes were being erected in clusters, and rich mineral veins had been mapped and were actively being aggressively mined...
Of course... there was the third, and most critical objective: The full-scale excavation of the lost civilization!
Dozens of elite archaeological teams were rapidly assembled, and hundreds of heavy automated excavators were rerouted from the Arctic to the extinct volcano.
The Federation needed answers. Exactly how many centuries had this city been buried? What was the absolute ceiling of their technology? And most importantly... what caused their extinction?
The total annihilation of an industrialized civilization, that was a terrifying concept!
Humanity desperately needed to understand the cause, ensuring they didn’t blunder into the same apocalyptic trap.
Then, there was the allure of the alien technology itself. In truth, many of the Senior Scientists felt incredibly conflicted regarding what they might find.
If this lost civilization’s technology surpassed the Federation’s, it was an undeniable boon. Humanity could leapfrog centuries of research and perfect their technology tree. Even if the alien tech was inferior, studying a different evolutionary path of engineering would still vastly improve humanity’s foundational sciences.
But how did they go extinct? Did their own scientific advancements destroy them?
Or... did they reach the apex of technological development, only to encounter an unfathomable cosmic horror, or be swatted out of existence by a hostile interstellar empire?
While the latter was statistically unlikely, it was far from impossible.
Consequently, the science divisions were torn by complex, contradictory theories, debating endlessly without reaching a consensus.
It was simply terrifying to accept that a relatively advanced civilization could be wiped out so effortlessly.
Furthermore, the geologists hypothesized that this couldn’t be the only city! There had to be other, massive urban centers buried deep within the planetary crust, just waiting to be unearthed!
The ruins they had stumbled upon were likely just a minor suburban settlement... The equivalent of a small human county. There had to be massive provincial hubs, industrial capitals, and even a global metropolis somewhere in the dark.
They were all buried deep underground!
However, logic dictated they start their excavation with the ruins they had already found... There would undoubtedly be a wealth of data buried there.
The logistical preparations for this massive dig took over half a month...
Hundreds of heavy excavators were airlifted to the site by the Aegis-class dropships. A massive scientific expeditionary force of roughly two thousand personnel was assembled, pulling the brightest Senior Scientists, engineers, and archaeologists from across the colony.
They would spearhead the excavation of the lost city.
