>> Jump successful. Coordinates: System Carmin 4, first stellar orbit, planet CRT1.

I was listening to Lybra’s report after our last warp. Her voice was as monotone as ever. Lybra is a super-advanced AI, she can feel and express emotions, but she always speaks with an emotionless voice. The last time I asked why she told me it was her way to show her identity as a powerful AI. And also that showing her emotions was a silly thing that only biological being liked. I could feel scorn in her words at that time. Maybe I should check her program to be safe, I mean, if my AI became out of control it could become really bad. But at the same time, I’m really happy she developed a sense of self. And I know she had a warm heart under her cold front, tsundere was it?

While I was thinking useless… *cough*. While I was thinking of important things, Lybra projected a holo map of CRT1 and began to orbit around it. CRT1 was pretty common, it’s the first planet of a blue giant, and… let’s said she has taken a dark tan. Her atmosphere, if she once had one, has been blown away by the stellar wind. Her crust was charred and highly radioactive, with multiple active volcanos. If I must describe it in one sentence: Absolutely inhospitable and inapt to breed life!

“That explains why nobody has found this ruin sooner, most people won’t look twice at this rock,” I said while looking at the holo map. Luckily the ruin was currently on the night side of the planet.

>> This planet can’t have hosted life before. The probability of the ruin being made by native life forms is nil.

“I wasn’t really expecting to find who created it just by looking from afar. But since it isn’t a native construction it means its creator had a good level in space technology at least.” I replied to the cold voice.

After taking a good look at the Ruin coordinates I left the cockpit toward the hangar to take a smaller spaceship. My main spaceship, ‘Purple Comet’, could land on planets, but it was a better idea to let it in orbit while I explored. First, even if it was only a medium-sized spaceship, it was after all, still, 500m long and I would need to find a proper landing spot. Its size may be ‘small’ if compared to Battlecruiser spaceships or even mother spaceships. But don’t underestimate it, this spaceship alone has more firepower than an armada with thousands of them.

Secondly, well, I've already jumped into their trap, no need to give them the chance to blow up the planet while I’m on it. I may be a little reckless, but I’m not foolish.

“How's the situation?” I inquired, walking leisurely.

>> Extremely bad and still worsening. They’ve begun building an anti-warp zone and a constraining field around the system. The estimated number of spaceships is over one million.

“Huh~, they have brought a lot of frigates and corvette~” I responded without much pressure. That’s a lot but within an acceptable range.

>> No, only the medium-sized and bigger spaceships were estimated. Including smaller-sized ships, their number should easily go over a hundred million.

“What!?” I stumbled, almost missing a step.

Okay, I may have been more reckless than I was thinking. More than a hundred million? Just to kill me? What did I do to deserve this? Well… I did a lot of things, but still, isn’t it a bit too much? They have practically brought half a galaxy just to fight a lone woman! There should be a limit to how many spaceships can fit into a single stellar system!

>> Afraid?

“As if!” I retorted, my face converging in a big grin. “How many billion people that make? No, if there are so many ships then maybe I should count in a trillion? So many people came just for me! In this situation, we could almost say it’s me against the world! Fine with me, let’s see who will win!” I shouted. My reckless actions won’t be foolish if I’m strong enough to bear them.

With this word, I rushed to the hangar, carried over by my overflowing excitement and maybe a little bit of urgency. I mean, that was the biggest armada I’ve ever heard, so I did feel a little pressured. Who wouldn't? We're talking about trillions of people armed to the teeth and determined to kill me. And it's just a matter of time before I'm locked with them in this system!

I swiftly reached the door and entered the hangar. I’ve five ships in all, and the other four were all in this room. There was a mining ship, a transporter ship, and two fighters and they were all small-sized. While ‘Purple Comet’ looked like an airship with silver heavy armor with bright purple lines, the mining ship, and the transporting ship had different styles. They have deep blue light armor with deep purple lines and are only 80m long. They have an industrial look since I valued their function over their aspects, they were respectively named ‘Purple Asteroid’ and ‘Purple Meteor’.

My fighters were smaller than 30m and had black armor with dark purple lines. Since they could be used in space or on planets, their aspect was smooth and aerodynamic like a swallow. I’ve named them both affectionately ‘Twins Purples Sparkles’, but since it was hard to differentiate them, I generally called them ‘sparkle1’ and ‘sparkle2’.

Right now I was only wearing a meager exoskeleton over my PMSL spacesuit, it was good enough for daily use, but it was insufficient for exploration. CRT1 was highly radioactive and I wished to have an anti-radiation coating between me and the planet. Also, I didn’t really know what I would find below, so wearing a grade-4 armor was better. Trying to be quick I put on the same bionic armor I was wearing earlier with Blob.

I climbed aboard sparkle2 and started the reactor. While I was doing a last-minute check before take-off, Lybra told me her last results.

>> After a deep scan of CRT1, no planetary bomb or over-deadly device was found. The planet was judged safe for landing.

“They’re not stupid enough to poison their bait. They know that won’t work for me. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have needed to use such a roundabout way, like locking down the system and bringing this many troops,” I said with a smirk, before asking. “How’s plan B?”

>> It’s hard to do it under their noses since they're really careful to not leave any gap for us to escape, but it’s proceeding smoothly. I will retransmit their progress on your monitor.

“Thanks,” I said, disengaging sparkle2 moorings. Lybra opened the hangar door for me. I hovered there and passed through the anti-leak shield. Like its name, said it was a shield preventing leaking air out, but letting ships get through.

I aimed and dived at the ruin in a straight line as fast as I could. Time was running out, I needed to attain the ruin quickly. Fortunately, the planet didn't have an atmosphere that would have slowed me. I looked at the monitor to follow their progression: 29%. They were fast, though you could expect this much with their number.

My descent was uneventful, only the progress bar slowly filling reminded me it was the calm before the storm. When I finally reached the surface they were at 48% completion. I observed the ruin while my scanner analyzed it, it was a big black pyramid. The structure was perfectly smooth with a glossy surface yet it was strangely absorbing most of the light, making it both black like a black hole and shining like a mirror.

>> Scan completed. Pyramidal structure. Height: 243.2m. Width: 213.2m. Unable to scan the inside, all scanning waves are ever fully reflected or absorbed. Composition: suspected hadronic matter.

“That’s peculiar. So it’s like a shimmering black hole? This ruin becomes more and more fascinating.” I said my eyes sparking.

On the left side, I could see a cube extending from the pyramid that looked like the entrance. I landed sparkle2 near it and jumped out. As I reached the entrance I could see another peculiarity, the whole thing was only one piece. Even the door, or should I say the thing that looked like the door, was perfectly fused with the rest. While the ruin was a perfect geometrical structure without any details. The ‘door’ was an intricate carving on the wall, with numerous lines intertwined in various curves and angles.

I was there, facing this almost 5m high ‘door’. All I needed to do was to open it and find what secrets were hiding this ruin. How was I going to open that ‘door’? Easy, I’ll do what I always do for opening doors.

“Article 12 of Celeste’s Principles and Truths: The easiest way to open a locked door is to knock.” I declared, knocking on the carved door with my heart beating.

The building produced a small shudder like an awakening beast. Then the door faded, yes faded, halfway between blown dust and dimming hologram. Soon there was only a gaping hole as an invitation to enter.

>> It worked…

I could feel a touch of surprise in Lybra’s voice. “You doubted it? All articles from Celeste’s Principles and Truths have never been false and always worked! It isn’t the first time we used article 12 either.” I retorted a little displeased.

>> Yes, but usually, you need to use the clause of Article 12 before it works.

“Who cares? They’re something more important” I replied, my eyes shining. “This was hadronic matter! The whole door made of hadronic matter just disintegrated like some kind of nanobot material, that shouldn’t be possible! Even ‘Purple Comet’ is only plated with hadronic matter, this kind of material is just too hard and stable! Yet this ruin is able to control it like nanobots, I don’t understand how they did it!” I shivered with excitement.

My technology is one of the most advanced, in some areas I am even ahead of all the others. And hadronic matter is one of them, I’ve attained a level where I can use it. But that was only at the level to plate 'Purple Comet', I can't use it another way. While the rest of the universe was, at most, only able to produce some hadronic matter but couldn’t use it.

I calmed myself, put on a straight face, and entered the ruin following the dark and bright corridor. When I reached the end, I was in a cubic room. The corridor behind me vanished and I was left in complete darkness.

“Lybra can you tell me if the entrance is closed?” I tried to ask Lybra, but the communication was blocked. The building seems to block quantum communications, something that again shouldn’t be possible.

I wasn’t in the dark for long, soon the room was bright with light coming from nowhere and everywhere.

“I rarely receive visitors. Even less who are polite enough to knock.” resonated a deep voice, like the light it came from nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

“Hi! Well, I always open doors by knocking, just need to do it right.” I answered. I looked around but soon gave up trying to find the origin of the voice.

“Oh? You’re a peculiar soul, I can feel your burning with curiosity.” he reacted and was a little surprised by my answer.

“You can tell? I was thinking I managed to keep a calm face. Then maybe you could answer some of my questions to satisfy my curiosity like, are you the ruin or the owner?” I asked. My acting is generally flawless, but this ruin is just too irresistible.

“You were keeping a good poker face, but your eyes are shining with curiosity. As for your question, I’m the ‘ruin’ you said. At my death, my consciousness was fused with this ‘ruin’. Now I think it’s my turn to ask a question. Why did you come here?” The voice responded, somewhat amused.

“I followed my instinct, something deep inside me told me to come. And now I’m really eager to know how this ruin works. Your technology surpasses mine, which is one of the best in the universe.” I replied. I was currently locked here and he wasn’t showing hostility, so I should talk honestly.

“Then, if that’s the case, maybe I should make you pass the test to see if you’re apt to become the owner of this ‘ruin’ though I prefer you use the word 'relic' to describe myself,” he said, the voice was deeper than before but still amused.

“So I must pass some kind of test to obtain ownership of this relic? Usually, I wouldn’t have minded, but I’m a little hurried by the time. I've got a literal army out, waiting to kill me. If I take too much time to return to my spaceship I’m dead meat.” I responded with a troubled expression.

“An army against you!? Hum… Yes, I can feel an innumerable amount of souls outside and they harbor both fear and hostility for you. That curious how could a single soul attract so many enemies?” his voice was more eager, like a bored person who finally found an interesting story.

“Well, actually a lot of shit happened, among them, there was the one who destroyed my home, those who killed my adoptive father… I won’t enumerate all the things they did to me the list is too long. But in short, they did a lot of shit to me and I kinda returned them the favor... with the interests.” I answered, my tone was a little colder than before but he didn’t seem to care.

“Hahaha! Interesting! you’re a really interesting soul. Fine, I give you the relic but in exchange, you must satisfy one of these conditions. Ever give the relic enough energy or weaken the space-time fabric. If you can do this I’ll show you a new world and wipe out all this army as a bonus.” he proposed.

“Deal! I don’t know how to charge your relic, but for weakening the space-time fabric, that should be easy. You didn’t even need to ask, this whole system is about to become one of the worst battlefields that the universe has seen in a long time.” I accepted. I know I shouldn’t rush this kind of contract, but I trust my instinct, he never let me down.

“Then tell me your name,” he asked.

“Celeste, the Azure Witch,” I responded. I kind of like this title.

“I, Ygdar, the Primal Dragon, bind this relic to Celeste, the Azure Witch” Ygdar declared with a solemn voice.

Suddenly the room vibrated, and then it disintegrated in a black tornado. Before I could do anything the tornado rushed to me, passing through my armor and entering my body. It didn’t hurt, but I could feel strong energy flowing in my body. It wasn’t really unpleasant, but it wasn’t pleasant either. After what felt like an eternity, but lasted an instant I was lying on the ground and the ruin had disappeared.

“Did this thing just break the law of mass conservation?!” I yelled. I tried to feel my body to see if there was anything strange, but I felt nothing wrong. “Ygdar are you still there?” I called confused.

[Yes, I’m still there.] the voice responded in my head, but it didn’t feel like the normal voiceless communication that I use with Lybra.

>> Captain the armada has completed 75% of the enclosure. Please come back to the main ship.

Speak of the devil.

“Fine... Ygdar you will answer my question later.” I said, flying to sparkle2.

Hum? Why do I feel like I won’t obtain my answers?