Chapter 1600: A Stunning Realization
The thought that what he was reading was something written by someone who had experienced it was something Ning had thought about long ago.
Hearing about blue oceans and green grasses, something that didn’t exist on any of the moons, was something that he couldn’t just believe that someone had come up with it on their own.
They either had to have read something about that beforehand. He believed that the author must have read some other book that referenced this or was simply born with these memories.
Hell, he even once thought if the author may be a reincarnated individual, who was using his past memories to write a book. However, reading how everything seemed to be a real experience of the author, written in his current life, made Ning wonder just what was going on here.
He flipped through the pages, reading through all the different locations that the author had been to. The Valley of Gonaffaj, the cliffs of Morkath, the mountain range of the North Teema, and the Romandy archipelago. All of these names and all of the descriptions surrounding it read like they were the author’s real experience.
Ning flipped the book back to the front page and looked at the language in which the book was signed.
If Ning were to assume that these books were the creation of people living in the underground cities, he couldn’t imagine why the author would think that Mayar’s brother was so incredible to get to him since the cities were so close together.
‘The language, it comes from a place far enough away that they have an entirely different language,’ Ning thought. Considering the author’s experience, he could imagine that he was well-versed in that language as well.
Ning tried searching for more he could learn from the book, but he couldn’t. He placed the book back and brought out Volume 7 of the same series.
He flipped through the front pages, and sadly there was nothing written at the front. There was, however, something that was printed on the very first pages that caught Ning’s attention.
It was the author’s preface.
‘It has been an incredible journey to bring these books out to you, but as all journey does, this one must end as well. Due to the disastrous situation of our planet, this will be the very last book on my journey. I wish you all well for the upcoming days, and pray that you all survive.’
‘I pray that we come together and do something for the survival of our species. Whatever the future may hold, I wish you all the best.’
Ning was stunned when he read that passage. “Planet? Survival of the Species?” He got a weird feeling about all of this. As though he should have seen this coming long before, but hadn’t managed to.
He had never questioned anything at all, so when he was beginning to learn the truth, it was very much surprising.
Ning flipped through the book, reading through the author’s journey. Compared to the 4th volume and the 7th volume, he could feel the difference in the writing, and how he explained the extreme conditions of the planet.
He had mentioned the changing climate within the 4th book as well, making mentions such as the extreme heat, or sudden floods. But none of it was to this extreme.
The planet seemed to be going through an apocalyptic event, with rapidly changing weather, heatwaves all throughout the year, heavily melted icecaps, and many other disastrous events within a single ear.
The planet wasn’t dying, but its people very much were.
Ning tried learning more, but there was nothing there to learn from the simple retelling of an adventurer’s story. If he wanted to learn more, he needed to ask the system itself.
Before that, however, he decided to see what the relic was that he had gotten today. It lay just a few steps away from him, so he walked up to it and looked at it.
Ning couldn’t make heads or tails as to what he was looking at, so he had to continue searching around. After a while of searching, he noticed a small box to the side that when pushed would pop open.
Inside of this box was a small cavity where a single spherical crystal lay.
A Data Core.
Ning pulled out the Data Core, surprised to find it there. “So this machine accepts Data Cores?” he thought. “What about the power source?”
He looked through the machine but couldn’t find any place where an energy crystal could be put at the front.
“It must be in the back,” he thought and knew that he was going to have to rip the cover to the back of the machine.
The half-spherical newt-metal that covered the entire thing came apart easily as Ning pried it open. Once the back half came off, Ning looked behind and easily found the place where the crystal was kept.
The crystal was a dud for now, but that was no problem for Ning. He had a few such crystals within his storage space anyway from the time when he learned to convert these random objects into these specific crystals.
Ning replaced the crystals and then used the System to fix the machine for anything else that was broken. Once everything was fixed, he looked to the front and tried to find a way to make the thing work.
The screen glowed brightly when he pressed something and Ning stepped back. A few words appeared on the screen, saying, “Searching for Data”.
A few seconds later, something began playing.
A man and a woman talked on the screen, the sound coming from within the metal box. They talked about their relationship. The woman was worried that her father wouldn’t approve of the man. The man wanted to elope if the woman’s family didn’t accept him.
“It’s a television?” Ning asked himself. He would’ve never thought that the relic they had found from the crater would turn out to be a television of all things.
Ning sat down and watched it.
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