Volume 10: Ancient Battleship Chapter 482: Power Room
Exclamations came from Leighton's side - after getting closer, they also saw these giant crystal pillars standing in the pit.
"These pillars...are they made of energy crystals?" Layton had a hard time controlling his facial expression. "Look at the quality...it seems they are all level nine energy crystals!"
"If the volume and number of these crystal columns are converted into standard-sized crystal blocks, there would be millions of them, right?" Zhuo Ligetu said absentmindedly.
"More than that! Just one stone pillar is estimated to contain hundreds of millions of energy crystals! With so many crystal pillars concentrated together, the energy contained in them is more than enough to blow up this planet!" Leighton spoke quickly, and at the same time activated the laser ranging equipment again.
"The cross-section of each crystal column is a 15-meter by 15-meter square. The depth of the pit bottom is 350 meters, the same as the height of the dome. If the base is not taken into account and these crystal columns are solid..." Layton paused briefly. From Ke Lan's perspective, he seemed to have taken a few deep breaths before continuing, "The energy crystal reserves in this pit alone are more than two thousand times the total amount of crystals discovered in all the Alpha ruins so far."
"Including Leviathan?" The Hound couldn't help but ask.
"Including Leviathan."
"Then we've made a fortune, haven't we?" The Hound was stunned for a moment after he finished speaking, and then he spat hard, "Damn it, I almost forgot, we can't take anything out of this place at all."
If the only way to enter and exit the ancient warship is to teleport, then these crystal pillars will probably have to sleep in this huge pit forever - if you want to teleport such a large object to another place, the energy required to open and maintain the wormhole is an incalculable number...
What's more, with the current level of human technology, it is impossible to create an artificial wormhole.
"These crystal pillars must be arranged here on purpose, right? This space can't be a storage room?" The hound held his chin and pondered.
"It's the power room." The person who spoke was Layton. "I think that this big pit and these crystal pillars are the core power supply array of 'Aguna Kator'... and the space we broke into is the power room of this ancient battleship!"
"Power room? The energy required for this thing is too terrifying, right?" The hound licked his cracked lips with his tongue. "Even if the density of Nino alloy is greater than many metals, isn't the volume of this thing only one-sixth of the Ark? I feel that the main reactor of the Ark is not so exaggerated..."
"You can't count it that way." Layton shook his head. "The Ark is essentially a colony ship, and this thing is a battleship... It's a weapon. This energy supply array is not only its power room, but also its ammunition depot!"
Ke Lan turned around and glanced at Aya Breya who was standing beside her. The latter's eyes were full of solemnity. Ke Lan immediately guessed what she was thinking - if this ancient warship fell into the hands of the heretic sect, the end of the Ark would not be far away.
There is nothing on Alpha that can stand up to this battleship.
Ke Lan suddenly squatted down and found some inconspicuous signs of wear and tear on the edge of the huge pit, as if someone had installed some heavy equipment on the edge of the huge pit.
Was it the traces left by the construction of this "power room"? Or was it left by the Alpha civilization that later explored this ancient warship? Ke Lan stretched out his hand and gently stroked the traces of wear and tear - whether these traces were left by the civilization that built "Aguna Kotor" or by the Alpha people, they were thousands or even tens of thousands of years old. It was hard to imagine how difficult it would be to find any clues from these traces.
"Even if these traces were left by the Alpha Civilization, for some reason, I cannot activate the corresponding memory fragments inside 'Aguna Kator'." Ke Lan thought, "But there is a way that may temporarily lift the suppression of the third civilization on the memory fragments. We can give it a try."
Ke Lan did not hesitate. He sat cross-legged on the ground and locked the joints of his power armor to prevent himself from falling due to the aftereffects of the headache or doing anything that would make Aya suspicious. Then , he directly activated the time stop.
The picture froze, and the surrounding scene turned black and white again.
Ke Lan subconsciously glanced at Aya Breya out of the corner of her eye. At this moment, the team leader of the special agents was walking forward. Her figure was frozen in place, with her upper body slightly leaning forward.
"What a pity, she is wearing such heavy armor, so her good figure can't be seen at all." Ke Lan complained silently in her heart. Team leader Breya, like Zofia, is a young white woman with an impressive figure. She is tall and slender, and her two long legs with golden ratio are even more eye-catching.
In fact, they are not very thin, it's just that the fat grows in the right places.
If this kind of figure were found in the old era, some people would definitely say that it was closely related to their natural genes, but in this era, as long as one has money, even the ugliest woman can be transformed into a peerless beauty.
Moreover, this kind of transformation interferes at the genetic level, not the plastic surgery in the old era that only operates on the skin. Therefore, if you marry an artificial beauty home, you don’t have to worry about your offspring growing up to be ugly.
Unless the man's genes are really too bad - but I think a man who can afford to marry such a beauty will not be stingy with investing in himself.
I don’t know why, but this time when I came out, Ke Lan suddenly missed the eldest lady of the Soma Group.
If Ke Lan said he had no feelings for such a gorgeous woman who came to him for free, he would be lying. It was just that he could not accept the marriage relationship in the upper class that was bound by interests. He was a person with a slight mental obsession with cleanliness. He did not like Zofia being with him simply for the sake of interests. This made him feel that he was more of a tool than a partner.
Ke Lan originally wanted to refuse righteously, but in the end he reluctantly agreed - it was not because he was blinded by the beauty, but simply because the other party offered too much.
As a relic hunter, he needs money; and as a person struggling to survive in the cracks carrying a heavy secret, he needs more money, and there are many things that are difficult to buy with money.
Not only him, but everyone else in the hunting group was also short of money.
The Hound needs a lot of money to support the families of his men who died in battle; Layton needs a lot of money to pursue better equipment and machinery; Ivan also needs money, he wants to open a bigger clinic and give Natasha a better life, and if possible, he also wants to take a researcher position.
Talking about money is cliché and hurtful, but in human society, no one can survive independently without the economic system. Even in the wilderness, the gray potatoes and slaves in the exile camps are clearly priced.
There probably was no love between the two at the beginning. The so-called engagement was essentially more like a cooperation and a transaction.
Or to put it another way, an investment.
But as their contacts with each other gradually increased, the relationship between them was also changing subtly. At least now Ke Lan was not so opposed to this engagement.
However, things like love and marriage are really too low in priority compared to what he has to do.
…
These messy thoughts flashed through Ke Lan's mind, and his attention once again fell on the marks on the ground.
When time is stopped, these traces emit a faint gray light, and there is a circle , which looks extremely eye-catching.
This reminded Ke Lan of the game "Gwent 3: Crazy Gambler" that was released last month. Although it was a card game, it also came with some RPG content. The glowing marks on the ground looked like the scene after the protagonist in the game turned on the "demon hunter vision".
But if a demon hunter wants to acquire this ability, he needs to drink a special decoction in a ceremony called "Trial of Green Grass". The cruelty of this ceremony is no less than the sacrifice of a heretical sect. The survival rate of those who take part in the trial is only about one-third, and among these one-third, only a few can eventually become demon hunters.
But then again, the experience of this ability in the game is that you can mark those clues that are usually difficult to find with highlighted outlines, which is especially useful in some "solving cases" tasks. Players only need to follow the clues found by the demon hunter's vision step by step to easily find the culprit.
"Could this gray light also be considered a disguised form of 'mission guidance'?"
In the time-stopped state, Ke Lan could no longer feel the mysterious suppression of memory fragments on the ship. Almost the moment he cast his eyes on these traces, a large amount of information flooded into his mind.
"The first energy storage crystal imitation test record:
We have analyzed the specific composition of the crystal column. As an energy carrier, it is undoubtedly an excellent object, but it does not seem to be a pure crystal. We decided to start with the outer shell..."
"Record of the Sixteenth Energy Storage Crystal Imitation Test:
It still failed. Although the crystal was successfully condensed, it exploded during the energy injection process. Seventeen people lost their lives. Next time when making an experimental model, maybe we should make a smaller one, but if it is too small, it will be inconvenient for subsequent operations..."
"Record of the 19th Energy Storage Crystal Imitation Test:
...We finally figured out the reason for the previous explosions. It was because of the problem with the crystallization formula ratio! We overturned the ratio formula obtained in the fourth experiment and started again from the first step. "
"Record of the 75th Energy Storage Crystal Imitation Test:
Finally, we successfully injected 60 units into the prototype. There was no explosion and no energy leakage, but the state of the crystal was very unstable. Violent shaking or bumping could lead to unpredictable consequences. This prototype was undoubtedly a failure. It has no practical value, but it is also the first step we have taken on this road. "
"Record of the 76th Energy Storage Crystal Imitation Experiment:
A true success! We have created energy storage crystals that can be used for practical purposes!
We reduced the amount of energy injected and added more metal materials inside the crystal to serve as stabilizers and structural reinforcers. It is no longer a bomb, but a reliable and convenient energy storage device.
But it still has very obvious disadvantages: the production cost is too high, but the energy it can store is not much..."
"Record of the 113th Energy Storage Crystal Imitation Experiment:
We took over this task from the previous research team. Just yesterday, the last researcher from the first research team passed away. This project has taken sixty-five years, and there are only thirty-five years left to meet the required one hundred year deadline.
First-level energy storage crystals have been put into mass production. They can be used in many small devices that do not consume much energy, but compared with these crystal columns, they are still far behind.
With the same volume, the energy storage efficiency of the sample cut from the crystal column is 256 times that of the first-level pure energy crystal..."
…
This time, the time stop lasted only half a second. During this half second, Ke Lan read the "Energy Storage Crystal Imitation Test Record" written by who knows how many generations of Alpha people, all the way to Chapter 113.
Energy storage crystals are the name given to energy crystals by the Alpha civilization, but this name is only limited to the energy crystals produced by the Alpha civilization itself. As for the irregular crystals in Leviathan's body and these giant crystal pillars in front of them, they have other names.
"It turns out that energy crystals were not invented by the Alpha civilization itself, but were copied from these crystal pillars." Ke Lan thought to himself, "Until the 113th test record, they could only produce level one energy crystals. But before the Alpha civilization disappeared, energy crystals had already become popular in this civilization and became their most important energy storage device."
"It seems that the process of replicating energy crystals is relatively smooth, as long as the Alpha civilization has created ninth-level crystals equivalent to these crystal pillars. Unlike Nino alloy, it has never been possible to produce it by itself, and can only be obtained by dismantling this ancient battleship."
"That is to say, this battleship may have crashed on this planet much earlier than I initially thought?"
Ke Lan raised his head and looked forward. There were still some traces of cutting on a crystal column not far from the edge of the pit, but these traces were almost too faint to be seen clearly.
If the Alpha civilization wants to conduct experiments, it will definitely need to collect a large number of samples, and it is possible to dig out an entire crystal column, but the crystal column array in front of Ke Lan and the others does not seem to have suffered too much damage.
Considering the fading marks on the pillars, could it be that... these crystal pillars have the ability to self-repair?
Ke Lan thought back...it seemed that no one had ever found a defective energy crystal in the Alpha ruins. Every "newly unearthed " energy crystal was intact, with the only difference being the amount of residual energy inside.
Those broken energy crystals were smashed by humans after their energy was exhausted.
"It is basically certain that this thing has the ability to self-repair, but the speed of repair is very slow. The traces on these crystal pillars are at least 10,000 years old, and they have not completely disappeared..."
