"Anyway - the Drone I sent out came back a while ago, want to see the report?" Mammon quickly changed the subject unabashedly as he avoided the question without so much as batting an eye at the attempt at humour Deus had made, what he could only hope was humour that is.
Deus let out a soft chuckle and nodded, "What'd it find?" Discovering how the surface had changed in the past century was just slightly above teasing Mammon on his list of current priorities, just slightly. Deus felt much more free to act how he wanted with Mammon around now that he'd revealed everything he needed to, he didn't feel the need to uphold his pretence as a 'boss' or 'leader' any longer although he couldn't entirely stop himself at times their relationship had grown far more in the past few hours than it had in the entire month prior.
"See for yourself." Mammon said as his expression visibly soured, he waved his hand which caused the apparition of a stream of light that went flying towards Deus only to come to a halt a meter away from his face. The light quickly gathered into a sphere which then expanded until it turned into a screen as the data converted itself into a format that he could easily read through.
Instantly thousands of pages of information was presented before him which he began to flick through at a lightning pace: terrain, geographical landmarks, tree density and other pieces of data the drone had collected were compiled and scanned through by him in mere moments - that was, until he came to the last piece of data the report had to give to them.
It was video footage; video footage began in the middle of a dense forest filled with the vibrancy of life. The drone was slowly walking through this forest aimlessly although it was carefully maintaining its direction heading west to ensure that it could simply do a single turn and return to Mammon easily, it was a directive Mammon had instilled in it to ensure that they didn't lose one of their limited assets to the outside.
It was evident from the surroundings that the planet had long since been terraformed - it was a situation that wasn't outside of their expectations of course; it was only the natural process of the Universe as time progressed for civilisations to begin to branch out and colonise planets with strategic importance or value, he wouldn't be surprised if they stumbled across a mining colony at some point in the future; the spherical rock they were on had an extremely high density of rare metal deposits that Deus himself had been exploiting for years to fuel his army which is why it wasn't surprising that the planet had been completely transformed to suit biological life.
It was a stark contrast to the wasteland that the planet had been before but he had to admit it was rather refreshing to look at.
Deus quickly brought his attention back around to the video from the perspective of the drone as it lumbered slowly through the forest, carving out a path through any thicker foliage or shrubbery where it could and only making slight deviations to the direction it was walking.
"Hmm?" His interested was immediately piqued as the drone began to take note of plants and trees that showed signs of withering and decay, grey and lifeless were the only words that could be used to describe them as these abnormalities stood out like fireworks in a night sky and they only grew in number the further the drone walked.
It wasn't long before it came to what could only be described as a clear boundary marking the end of life and beginning of death - there was a clear cut line in the grass dividing the two portions of the forest: where the drone stood where there was an abundance of life and growth and then the other, decayed and lifeless as trees with twisted branches and withering trunks lay beyond the 'boundary.'
What was worse however was that the boundary could be seen to be expanding at a visible rate, although it was slow he could estimate merely based on the footage that it was increasing its territory by half a centimetre every few seconds.
The drone didn't stop when it came to this however, it had only been ordered to start its return when it was approaching the point of no return on its power reserves or if it was in danger of being destroyed - having seen no evidence of the strange anomaly effecting metallic substances it deemed there was no logical reason for it to return as neither of the two conditions that Mammon had placed on it had yet been fulfilled.
So, without wasting even a moment of its slowly dwindling energy supply it had already begun its trek into what looked like the aftermath of an apocalypse while it continued to catalogue anything and everything that so much as much the requirements of 'interesting' that Mammon had created for it to operate from.
The drone continued for another thirty minutes undisturbed, there was nothing but a land of death all around it as far as its eyes could see at this point. It was as if it had crossed over onto a completely different planet, one that had been ravaged by some sort of devastating biological attack that had completely wiped out the ecosystem.
It wasn't long after that the drone approached the 'point of no return' as its energy reserves reached the point where if it didn't turn around in the following minutes it wouldn't be able to return, the video footage shut off abruptly with the drone doing a complete one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn and beginning to walk back in the opposite direction.
The screens around him closed as he found himself back with Mammon; only a few moments at most had passed since he'd begun to watch the video despite how it seemed, by speeding up both the video and allowing his mind to operate at the same speed he'd been able to watch through an hour or so worth of content in a short period of time - Mammon himself had done it prior to sending him the data.
"Biological?" Deus asked after a few moments of silence had passed between the two, "Maybe, but it's too soon to tell - the drone only gathered a few samples and we don't have the technology to test them here." Mammon said as he brought up a few images displaying the samples the drone had taken in containers in the forge.
They were small pieces of grass, flowers and a broken branch that had presumably simply snapped off of one of the trees because of how frail they had become from the decay.
Deus fell into thought as various ideas for what the decay could be and what could have caused it came to mind but ultimately they simply lacked the necessary information to justify any idea - they could, however, be certain that it had something to do with the current inhabitants of this world wherever or whoever they were.
"Considering that the drone was able to traverse it without being damaged we can assume it only effect biological substances but we can't rule out the possibility that it simply takes longer for it to effect metals instead." Of course, Deus did find it unlikely that it would have any effect on metals as it was a possibility that if the decay was caused by someone that they were using it to run the current civilisation inhabiting the planet off-world so they could take control of the facilities themselves but they also couldn't rule out the possibility of this being an attempt at planetary annihilation.
"For now we keep our distance; we build up power and then get off this rock, whatever happens to this planet has nothing to do with us." Deus said after making up his mind, he'd rather abandon the planet to whatever forces were fighting for it than get embroiled in conflict before they were ready for it.
Mammon didn't need him to speak another word as he gave a knowing smile and disappeared from the virtual space, moments later the drones they had at their disposal were heading towards the entrance with orders to gather basic resources. Deus nodded with satisfaction as the space around him transformed back into the pristine white void that he was used to.
Just as he was about to also remove the human image from his form he felt a sense of reluctance that caused him to pause and stop himself; he didn't say anything as he just shook his head and began to open screen after screen as he began to create plans for their way forward into the future.
"Just wait... We're coming."
End of the first Arc - Mammon
I feel like this chapter was worse than most?
really i felt like this was one of the better ones and the corrosion gives a nice boost to head into the universe.
the best one sofar is where deus gaint his emotions and the following chapters. the quality of the whriting also seems to improve with each chapter
keep it up "TheWorldTree"
thank you a lot for this story sofar
I agree this story is really good. You make it so everything is understandable and interesting.
MOAR!!
MOOOOOAAAAAAAAR WHY DO YOU ABANDON US * cocks rifle* ITS PASSED MONDAY