Xicackna woke suddenly, her sleep disturbed by strange noises. Xilofane would no doubt have found the words to describe the exact sounds of this din, but she herself could not compare it to anything known.
Peeking cautiously and unseen out of the shelter provided by the containers, she saw several humans approaching her hiding place. Dressed in strange clothing of an aggressive bright yellow, they were simple level 1 humans. Growling among themselves in their monster tongues, they began to carry away the containers.
The Zcarbb slammed her mandibles in annoyance. There was no doubt that she could easily kill these few workers in the event of a conflict, but this risked revealing her location to higher level hunters who would come after her. It was better to try to escape discreetly.
The humans were blocking the exit from the street and behind them was the massive silhouette of one of their mysterious vehicles, as big as, if not larger than, an elite soldier. The only escape was therefore the ascent. Looking at the facades of the termite mounds that surrounded her, she saw that they were full of crevices, making climbing easier than most of the buildings in the hive, except for the verticality.
From what she had observed, humans seemed less flexible than Zcarbbs when it came to moving overhead. It was therefore also likely that there would be less chance of encountering them at height. Maybe they weren't even in the habit of looking up, which would allow her to save her precious... four... minutes... of invisibility...
Taking a deep breath, she chased away her galloping anger and continued her climb. The nearby termite mounds were not as tall as those at the battle site, so she quickly found herself overlooking the Human’s world.
Many Humans were moving in all directions and she could not yet guess the tasks to which they were assigned, nor the castes to which they belonged. She took the risk of lowering her invisibility and relying only on her camouflage. No cry, nor any discordant thought, came to disturb her safety.
Observing the crowd, she noticed that with rare exceptions, all the humans were level 1. Some, tiny, were probably larvae and had a level of a quarter. They were walked without any apparent purpose by the adults, since several passed in one direction then the other. The purpose of this transport remained mysterious. There were also a few low-level hunters, none higher than her own.
She found herself thinking that she could find a heavy object to drop from the terrace of the termite mound, onto passing Humans, thus gaining the experience needed for her next level. However, she corrected herself: it was far too dangerous. Maybe all their workers would rush to her to figure out what could have caused the incident, then call their soldiers to eliminate her at the slightest hint of her presence. Worse still: one of the eliminated humans could turn out to be one of these mysterious “regressors”. It risked avoiding the projectile and, having a head start, devising a foolproof plan to eliminate her. The statistical probability that there was a second regressor was close to zero, but she knew that sometimes theories didn't agree with reality.
It was better to use this time to study these strange creatures. They were disturbing: except for their grotesque lower half, they were too similar to the nobles of the Zcarbbs. Some of them could be males or commoners, based on the shape of their chests, but the other half seemed to be females. They had no chitinous protrusions to protect their bodies and had to make do with clothing, but their shape was close to that of mature princesses in the most unsettling way.
How was it that the proportion of females was so high? Was she in a noble neighborhood? This perhaps explained the significant presence of larvae: a human queen must necessarily be nearby.
Among the hunters, there were also a few females. Given their small proportion, this did not surprise her: they probably led groups made up of males and soldiers. Here, everything gave the impression of disorder. There was a distinct lack of servants and soldiers to protect all these princesses. Did they think they were safe? A few distances away a red door was found and, at this very moment, a daring princess Zcarbb could attack them at any moment...
Daring or a little lost... But if Queen Xa-tar-Lona had produced assassins, with the ability to turn invisible, she could easily have sent them here the same way she herself had arrived without being see. This could be a long-term strategy for fighting monsters: she estimated that an assassin would take three years to reach maturity if they were laid now. Much simpler than a noble, it was nonetheless a complex Zcarbb which required a fairly long development time to be perfectly competent.
Thus, Xicackna spent long hours examining humans in their natural habitat. Her observations took her little further. At most, she managed to distinguish members of the soldier class by their dark blue clothes and their curious headgear. She manages to understand their role by their way of moving around and being on the lookout as well as by the presence of weapons at their side: small versions of the steel spitters.
The most astonishing thing was that humans, male or female, seemed to be able to belong to all castes of society. However, it was inconceivable that a developed species would not be more strictly organized. And where were the sexless workers needed to maintain good living conditions for the upper class?
She also saw many of the human vehicles pass by. Functional and not in ruins, these surprised her greatly. Although humans seemed to communicate relatively little by pheromones, their vehicles left interesting trails in their path, probably to indicate to following vehicles where to pass. An active principle, probably mechanical and self-powered, allowed these large masses of scrap metal to move. If she had one on hand, her eldest Xana-Eloba would be over the moon. She would probably find a way to duplicate this principle to increase the productivity of the colony.
But all time of observation has its limit: that of the need to seek sustenance. The princess therefore had to start looking for human canteens. To her great astonishment, this research very quickly bore fruit: locals with varied appearances punctuated the landscape, signaling with their tempting smells that one could eat there.
Xicackna descended cautiously and reached ground level, near one of these canteens which she judged to be less exposed than the others. Taking her courage in both hands, she prepared to enter under cover of invisibility, to steal something to survive, when she stopped abruptly.
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There, near the building, in a deserted outdoor area, several containers exuded the scent of mysterious foods. Approaching warily, she checked several times for guards before becoming visible again. She lifted the fragrant lid and found underneath the unthinkable: stored crudely, without the slightest consideration for its preservation, a large quantity of food was mixed with inedible materials. Did humans like their food to go moldy? One could expect anything from such strange monsters. Fortunately, the present pittance had not yet had time to spoil.
She took one of the dishes she had frequently observed in the hands of Humans and analyzed it. It was very simple and crude, but she didn't expect more refinement from such a disorganized species. There were two slices of a kind of soft dough that vaguely resembled the breads some distant colonies made by grinding seeds. Between the two, pieces of vegetables and meat of mysterious origins mixed with a sticky yellow substance whose consistency was reminiscent of Sprouz's slime, but without its pleasant smell.
Tasting this otherworldly dish, she almost vomited: the edibility remained acceptable, but mysterious sauces, yellow and red, permeated the pittance, making it nauseating. But what must be done must be done, she forced herself to eat enough food to regain her strength. She poured some into her bag as well, grimacing at the thought that she would never be able to wash it enough to get rid of the stains and the smell.
Continuing her exploration, Xicackna accumulated numerous observations on the aberrant behavior of monsters and copied them into scent tablets. Even if she had an excellent memory, an essential quality for a future queen, these documents would help her to transmit her report more easily to make it available to the notables of the hive. She had several amber tablets and a heating punch to project her pheromones inside them.
Throughout her exploration, fear did not leave her and horror at the incongruity of alien society frequently disturbed her: how could such a poorly organized civilization have reached such a degree of development? Certainly, humans must have been at their peak and on the verge of collapse. They could never reach the lowest level of Zcarbbs civilizations.
But this thought was quickly overturned by a new discovery. She had found a new hiding place: a dark building which, however, was frequently teeming with humans. Even when these diurnal creatures mysteriously made appear light to illuminate the places, they concealed numerous crevices and subtle hiding places to protect the princess. Better yet: the monsters went there with packets of food.
The main food of those who went to these places consisted of small sweet balls that the humans ate very noisily. During this time, they watched images projected on a wall recounting the distant past of their people. Humans' techniques for reproducing images and sound were quite impressive, surpassing current Zcarbbs technologies. However, they seemed to forget most of the information since no odor was emitted.
Xicackna remained for very long hours observing, captivated, the secrets of humanity. If she didn't understand the sounds emitted, she had no problem getting out the translation of the thoughts of the monsters present. She thus learned that humanity actually came from another galaxy, where they lived a long time ago. At that time, they had monstrous technologies, such as flying machines and ships capable of crossing the expanses of space. A technique that seemed an aberration of physics, called “hyperspace,” allowed them to travel quickly from one planet to another.
In this galaxy, humans had encountered many species, as ugly and disorganized as themselves, and had formed a large community. Violent wars had broken out and their enemies had raised immense armies of combat automatons. Fighters of the time used weapons that fired fiery rays of light. While their composition was mysterious, they did not seem as effective as the projectile weapons humans had since invented.
Having no legitimate authority to bring them together, despite the presence of a female qualified as queen, humans and other monsters were organized into a large assembly where each sought their own interests. Through deception, one of the humans had finally succeeded in creating a supreme authority, but he was not worthy of it because he was crazy. Indeed, he had gone so far as to build a weapon capable of destroying planets, which was totally stupid since a destroyed planet is no longer useful. Fortunately, less evil humans had destroyed his monstrous weapons twice and finally killed the madman.
Then the story became even more bizarre. The weapons grew as big as planets and destroyed many of them. The dead madman turns out not to be dead, once again proving the dangerous powers of Humans using the System, and prepares a strictly aberrant number of war machines each capable of destroying a planet. Xicackna had great difficulty understanding the sequences of mysterious actions ultimately leading to the destruction of all of these devices. She supposed that far from being totally crazy, the madman must have programmed some kind of device to destroy his own weapons to prevent them from falling into other bad hands.
The projection had stopped without explaining the events that had led humans to leave their galaxy to come to this one. Given their tendency to create tens of thousands of weapons each capable of destroying planets, it was very likely that they simply annihilated their home galaxy. However, we could guess that the humans must have maintained links with the other surviving monsters thanks to the portals they used to attack the Zcarbbs.
In this galaxy, however, humans no longer seemed to have flying machines or automatons, even if the technology of their ranged weapons had progressed. The “movie” often talked about humans having strange powers, such as the ability to jump very high or make objects move from a distance. They fought with mysterious blades of light that Xicackna had never seen wielded by Hunters before. Their powers, in such distant times, were one more clue proving that Humans were indeed responsible for the creation of the System.
YOU HAVE COMPLETED A hidden QUEST!
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Quest successful
You watched all the episodes of the “prelogy” and the trilogy in succession (the third so-called trilogy doesn't count because it sucks). You have completed a hidden quest!!
Reward: 60 XP
Current experience: 1771
Stored experience: 3069
You gain a level!
Current level: 8
Experience needed for next level: 429
All of Xicackna's eyes opened briefly in surprise. Hidden quests? She didn't expect to receive the experience needed for her next level like this... But it was... good. Surprising, but finally a positive thing in the midst of his misfortunes.
She also noted that the System expressed a point of view. She did not know if this third trilogy “suck” because of poor quality of visual reproduction or because of discrepancies with the real history of humanity, but in any case, an opinion was expressed. Since no civilization would ever use machines to issue opinions, there was evidence of real intelligence, controlling the System, or at least inserting the information necessary for the mechanism that made it work... At the same time, the humans of the past seemed to design needlessly complicated automatons that spoke to say nothing. If Humans were indeed the creators of the System, it was not impossible that their civilization would be stupid enough to entrust its choice processes to automatons... and perhaps they would do a better job than these disorganized creatures...