Chapter 3829 Poorly Understood
The newly-discovered pocket space that the Golden Skull Alliance had accidentally uncovered was larger and more diverse than the recent arrivals thought.
It was large. Whereas the Royal Tomb could fit a large city or a decent metropolis, the pocket space that everyone called Purgatory could fit hundreds or thousands of cities!
The internal volume of this space was remarkable. It was truly a space that was largely isolated from the base level of reality. Aside from getting affected by a minute amount of gravity, light, heat and cosmic radiation, the area inside Purgatory was pretty much disconnected from the rest of normal space.
In fact, the scientists studying the intricate phase whale enclave were still deciphering its coordinates. All they figured out was that it was located a lot closer towards the blue supergiant star that dominated the Garimel System.
"Let me put it this way, commander." One of the astrophysicists said to the Sentinel Commander. "If this pocket space is no longer displaced from reality and returns to normal space all of a sudden, we would all get cooked in a matter of minutes. Those who are able to head inside mechs or starships will be able to last longer, but if they can't make it out of the hot zone in time, eventually those metal shells will overheat to the point where all of their systems fail."
Commander Casella's suited figure briefly turned upwards. She stared out at the strange gray fog that obscured whatever lay at the edge of the pocket space.
She found it difficult to imagine that they were so close to the hot and powerful supergiant. The temperature in the pocket space was actually quite reasonable at 5 to 70 degrees Celcius depending on the location.
This was a decent temperature range for keeping phasewater in liquid form, which also happened to be its most usable state. The fish-whale race that occupied at least one of the asteroids also thrived under these conditions.
The powerful creature that created Purgatory definitely arranged the environment this way for a reason. Casella just wondered where the fish-whales fit in. Were they always meant to balloon their numbers and mutate in such an aggressive, mindless species?
She and everyone else in the Golden Skull Alliance still had a lot of questions about these new discoveries. There were so much that they did not know and the only clues they could derive anything solid from was the mysterious alien gate that was still anchoring the same spatial portal that was still active.
When Casella looked at the gate in the distance, she grew slightly more concerned.
"I am not a physicist, but even I know that portals that connect two distant spaces together consume a lot of energy. Where is the device getting its power from? How long can it remain active? How is it being controlled?"
Though she maintained a calm and commanding facade, the direction of her questioning betrayed her concerns.
No one wanted to get stranded in this fish-whale paradise if the portal suddenly shut down!
Although Patriarch Ves had promised to all of the forces sent through the portal that he and his clan would do anything to open it up again if it shut down for some reason, who knew whether he could deliver on his promises.
Just in case, the expeditionary fleet shipped over an abundant amount of food, energy cells and other basic resources.
The supplies weren't enough to keep the mech forces in excellent condition for years on end, but it was no problem for them to subside for this period of time.
In any case, nutrient pack crates took up little space while providing a lot of nutrition at stupendously low prices. The fleet probably stored over a hundred years of compressed and dehydrated food products!
"We cannot answer your questions at the moment. We are barely making a start with understanding how this alien device works." The physicist replied in a tired tone. "We are dealing with a relic alien technological device that may have decayed over time to the point where it is no longer functioning as intended anymore."
Casella grew sharper. "Is the device showing signs of faltering?"
"Ah, not exactly, commander. It is showing numerous anomalous signs that we do not think are intentional, but we still know far too little about how it is actually supposed to function. While we can presume the gate originated from the phase whales, the problem is that we do not understand much about this race considering we have only recently come into contact with them. The databases we have access to contain only vague descriptions and indirect references to portal gates like these. Since we cannot rely on a large body of existing studies in alien technology, we have to perform much of the original research ourselves."
The Sentinel Commander vaguely understood how impossible that was for the research teams in the employ of the Larkinson Clan. The researchers all graduated from notable or prestigious second-class universities and possessed decent qualifications in their respective fields. The older and more senior scientists were particularly competent in their specialties.
However, they fell far short of the actual talents at the upper range of their professions. Any good first-class scientist could easily crush the research capabilities of all of the Larkinson research teams put together!
This was a gap that could not be overcome with quantity. The quality of education, the degree of access to high-end knowledge and the power of excellent augments were all essential to nurturing a top scientist.
The Life Research Association existed as a specialized research and development state for hundreds of years, but despite all of the enthusiasm towards biotechnology, only the Supreme Sage ever attained the qualifications of a top scientist that was brilliant enough to affect human society as a whole!
This example illustrated the immense difficulty of producing or obtaining such an excellent researcher. The man standing before Casella and the rest of the scientists studying the alien gate were far from reaching this level!
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