Volume 10: Ancient Battleship Chapter 497: Ancient Battleship, start!
Finally, Ke Lan grabbed the bag full of medicines and bandages. He swung it hard, and Valentina's legs were finally freed and she stood up straight.
"Are you okay?" After the problem was solved, Ke Lan immediately distanced himself from the other party - even though in this narrow cockpit, the so-called distance was only a dozen centimeters. At this distance, he could clearly feel the hot air exhaled by the other party spraying on the top of Ke Lan's head.
"It's okay, thank you." Valentina said.
"You're welcome. I should be the one apologizing. After all, I was the one who bumped into you... Let's not talk about this for now. I have something urgent to tell Lao Gou and the others. Which one is the talk button?" Ke Lan stuck his head out, his eyes scanning the Valkyrie's console - this console had been significantly modified according to Valentina's usual usage habits. The layout of the various function buttons was completely different from that of the standard model. Ke Lan couldn't determine what those unmarked buttons were used for for a while.
"The blue round button in the upper left corner," said Valentina.
"Okay, got it." Ke Lan immediately pressed the button she pointed to, and then shouted to the microphone on the side of the console: "Hello? Hound? Layton? Team Leader Breya? Can you hear me?"
"Ke Lan?" The Hound's voice rang out in the cockpit. "Are you awake? Are you okay? You don't know how high the radiation level in your body was just detected—"
"I'm fine." Ke Lan interrupted him, "What's the situation now?"
"What's going on? Are you asking...?"
"The giant pit... Has anything changed in the giant pit?"
"No, it's exactly the same as before you fell unconscious. The crystal pillars that sank haven't risen up, and the big bugs are still lying there unable to move... But the radiation intensity in the environment has dropped a bit. I think it has a lot to do with the disappearance of the green light."
"How long have I been unconscious?" Ke Lan asked again.
"Wait a minute, let me check the watch... It's not that long, maybe half an hour."
Half an hour? Ke Lan was slightly stunned. Although he still felt a dull pain deep in his head, his mental strength that had been overdrawn had been mostly restored... Before this, when he was practicing "time stop", if his mental strength was almost exhausted, he would have to sleep for at least ten hours to recover.
By this calculation, Ke Lan's mental recovery speed has increased by at least twenty times, and the frequency of using time stop can be greatly improved... But the problem is that Ke Lan has no substantial experience of "becoming stronger". He can't even be sure whether he got the "enhancement" in that abnormal space or after coming into contact with the metal ball.
However, now that his mental strength has been restored, there is no reason for him to delay any longer in the cockpit.
Ke Lan directly opened the hatch, turned over and jumped onto the ground.
"Fuck! Why did you jump out like that? There's still residual radiation outside, are you trying to kill yourself?" The Hound saw Ke Lan jumping out and immediately started to curse, then kicked Layton on the butt, "Where's Ke Lan's power armor? Is it repaired? Put it on him quickly."
"How can it be that fast!" Layton wiped off the footprints on his butt with a bit of grievance and said, "The light curtain just now almost evaporated all the filling gel used for cushioning in the armor interlayer. It will take more than six hours for the newly injected gel to solidify."
"Do you think I will believe your bullshit? If that layer of light curtain can really burn the gel clean, why is Ke Lan not hurt at all?" As the Hound said this, he quickly found a spare protective suit and threw it to Ke Lan.
"Why would I lie to you--" Layton stretched out his hand, and his palm was covered with burnt and cracked things like rubber that had been burned by fire. "There is some residual gel near the cooler and the heat dissipation pipe, but it has also been burned like this. The temperature of this layer of light curtain is really not low, at least more than a thousand degrees. Even my mechanical arm is damaged."
As Layton spoke, he suddenly glanced at Ke Lan and lowered his voice: "I don't know why Ke Lan was unharmed... Maybe it's because the civilization that built this battleship is too advanced in technology and can already achieve ultra-high precision strikes... That's probably it."
Layton originally wanted to say that this might be related to Ke Lan’s own special abilities, but considering the presence of Aya and others, he could only put the blame on the third civilization.
Ke Lan put on the protective suit, took two anti-radiation pills handed to him by the Hound, then walked slowly to the extinguished control console and stood still.
"Wait a minute, Ke Lan... You don't want to try again, do you?" The corner of the hound's eye twitched, "You were unconscious for a full half hour just now."
"It was just an overdrawn mental force. It has recovered now. The cost of trial and error is not that great." Ke Lan said in a deep voice, "Those crystal pillars did not rise again, which means that the first contact was not in vain."
After coming out of the mecha, Ke Lan immediately focused his attention on the console. However, those memory fragments were still hiding behind the mist and showed no sign of emerging.
He was basically certain that the only way to get those things out was to connect himself to this ancient warship again.
When they were connected for the first time, he had a vague feeling that his spiritual power that was drained away seemed to be used to fill something like a progress bar. However, his total spiritual power was too small, and even though it was drained alive, it was unable to fill up the progress bar.
Well... since it doesn't work once, why not try a few more times?
With this thought in mind, Ke Lan once again placed his hands on the metal ball.
This time, the metal ball lit up with a soft white fluorescence.
"The scene in that memory matches!" Ke Lan was suddenly excited... He could clearly feel that this time, only a little bit of his mental power was drained away and then stopped - the "progress bar" seemed to have been filled up!
"Ke Lan? Ke Lan, are you okay?" Naturally, the others also noticed the difference between the metal ball and the first time they touched it, but due to the previous experience of Leighton and Aya, no one dared to reach out and touch Ke Lan this time.
"I'm fine." Ke Lan replied, "I feel like this console... is like a battery that needs to be charged with mental power, but it is now fully charged."
A super battleship of the size of "Aguna Tor" cannot be driven by just that little mental power. It is like a 120-kilowatt hovercraft, which generally needs to be equipped with an 80-kilowatt-hour battery. Ke Lan's mental power is equivalent to two AA dry batteries. After connecting to the car engine, it can't even reach the threshold to start it.
But the console is obviously not an engine. It is more like a small remote control. Two dry batteries are more than enough for the remote control.
A loud sound of rocks rubbing against each other came from above their heads. When they looked up, they found that the dome above the huge pit had fallen down and fit perfectly into the huge pit!
The sound of crystals being crushed came from the bottom of the pit. At this time, the crystal pillars had already sunk, and the only ones that could be crushed by the dome were probably the tragic crystallized lava leeches. But what puzzled everyone was that there was no explosion throughout the whole process. It was unknown whether the fully crystallized lava leeches had lost the ability to self-destruct, or whether this ability was "restricted" by the giant pit.
The giant pit had disappeared from sight, and in its place was a thick square stone pillar - it was not actually accurate to call it a stone pillar, after all, the length and width of this thing were already four and a half times its height. Even if the part embedded in the giant pit was counted, it was still twice as long... As for how long the part above the dome was, that was not something they could explore clearly.
The originally empty power room instantly turned into a U-shaped corridor.
"There seems to be some pattern on it... It seems to be words!" A sharp-eyed agent suddenly pointed at the descending "stone pillar" and shouted.
"It's not text!" Layton said immediately, "These patterns are all crystal structures embedded in the surface!"
Everyone then realized that the material of this "stone pillar" was not actually rock, but a kind of ink-black crystal!
The surface of this "super crystal column" is covered with delicate and complex unknown circuits.
Layton was almost certain that this thing was the "engine" of this ancient warship!
At the same time, a strange consciousness invaded Ke Lan's mind——
"Initialization completed, start?"
This consciousness asked Ke Lan.
Start? Does it mean start this ancient warship? Hasn't this warship been started before? Otherwise, why are the lava leeches at the bottom of the pit still alive when they came in? If Park Sangyou successfully started this warship, these big bugs should have been crushed to death?
But if Park Sang-woo failed to start the warship successfully, how did it rise into the air? How was the earthquake in the Molten Mine Area triggered?
A series of questions popped up in Ke Lan's mind. He wanted to throw all these questions to the strange consciousness that invaded his mind, but he soon discovered that this "consciousness" from the battleship did not have the ability to communicate independently.
The intelligence of this thing is not even as good as the AI butler that everyone on the Ark has. Faced with this thing, Ke Lan can only choose from the options it gives.
Now that we have come this far, there is no reason to stop here... "Start!" While answering this consciousness, Ke Lan also shouted softly in the real world.
A powerful pressure was immediately exerted on everyone, and the hound that failed to stand firm in time even fell to the ground.
"What's going on? Why do I feel like the gravity here has suddenly increased several times... It's like something is pressing on my body, and breathing has become a little difficult." The Hound said nervously. He had originally planned to try to get up from the ground, but when he found that the gravity was gradually increasing, he simply lay down - in this position, the pressure on the body would be much less than when standing, and he would not experience dizziness due to the large amount of blood gathering under the body.
"It's not that gravity has increased... it's that the acceleration of gravity we are experiencing has increased!" Layton reacted immediately, "This thing is what pilots and mechanics often call 'G force'... This battleship is rising at a high speed!"
"G-force? What a crappy battleship... Doesn't this even have this kind of... protective measures...?" The Hound complained while gasping for breath... In terms of physical fitness alone, he should be the worst in the team, and the G-force applied to him at this time has already made this old hunter, who has one foot in his 50s, a little overwhelmed.
"There should be protective measures, but they don't work for people like us." Leighton said, his eyes shifting to Ke Lan.
At this time, the white light curtain on Ke Lan's body appeared again. Under the cover of this light curtain, his expression was very calm, and he seemed to have not felt the terrifying G-force brought by the warship when it was pulled up.
You know, the power armor worn by Hound and Layton has the function of anti-gravity suits, which can reduce the G-force that the wearers are subjected to to a certain extent. However, the spare protective suit that Ke Lan temporarily put on only has a single protective function and is of no help in reducing G-force.
Even the armored Hound and others could hardly withstand the G-force. Ke Lan, without any protective measures, was still able to stand calmly, which was obviously related to the layer of light curtain on his body.
"Ke Lan, are you in control of this battleship now? Can you control its flight direction? And... can you see the scenery outside the battleship?" Aya leaned against Valkyrie, supported her hands on her knees, bent her waist, and asked loudly.
