The reaction to Damon's reveal was far more explosive than he had anticipated. Not even from the humans or the various grunts, but from Ambrose himself. The vampire burst into laughter so loud and mirthful that everyone below was at a loss.
Felicia, Damon, as well as a few others, were caught frowning at this reaction, while the rest were just lost. Ambrose soon checked his almost comically villain-like laughter and gazed down upon them with shining red eyes.
"Great! Here I was afraid this task would be a boring one, but it appears you humans are far more fascinating than I gave you credit for. I, Ambrose Bloodwarren, pledge to take care of all of you well! Men, escort them to the luxury guest rooms and ensure that their every need is met!" The vampire commanded with a wide grin that seemed friendly enough.
The grunts woke up from their stupor and silently guided the just awakened humans through the corridors of their spaceship. The corridors were elaborate and well-designed, giving off the full spectrum of sci-fi vibes for everyone to totally geek out in the face of such things.
With the Overseer around, no one had dared to single themselves out, but around mere grunts, the 100 humans proved to be far less reserved. The grunts saw this, yet they could only swallow their annoyance because of Ambrose's words.
Even though there were some touchy fellows, there were also some who were silent and reserved. Damon was among the latter category, as his face fell. He was trying to make sense of Ambrose's reaction towards the end, and as a politician, he already had an inkling of an idea.
Of course, that was only using the logic of a human. As such, the thing he craved most right now was information about the behaviour of those different species. He quietly followed through the long corridors until they arrived in the living quarters. Each of them had been allocated luxurious rooms that surpassed five-star hotels on Earth in terms of decor, and even CERN in terms of technological advancement.
A person could spend a week here just trying to uncover all the neat gadgets and nifty thingamajigs as much as they wanted. The moment Damon was assigned his room, he first checked everything, from the bathroom, to the lounge area and then the kitchen.
He also checked the bedroom and nodded with satisfaction. Unlike on Earth, checking for any spying equipment was futile here, since he had no idea about what an alien spy tool would even look like.
Once done, Damon went over to a table in the center of the lounge, which had a strange machine on the top of a flat table. From what he had seen in various sci-fi depictions, Damon guessed that this might be some sort of terminal, so he tried to access it.
The moment he did, the terminal lit up and a holographic projection of a dashboard appeared before him. A cold feminine voice also spoke from the terminal, with a similar accent to Ambrose, indicating that it was based on a female Vampire species.
"Welcome guest #100, I'm the central terminal of the Blood Voyager ship. How may I assist you today?"
Damon paused for a bit to ponder. "Bring up everything related to the laws of the Intergalactic Union of All Species."
......….
Felicia was astounded by the sheer technological advancement present in her room alone. She wrung her lips when she thought of all her hard work on Earth trying to advance humanity gone down the drain.
Like Damon, from the very essence of her childhood, she had been driven to achieve her own dreams. Coincidentally, her ambition had also centered around immortality, though her's had been 'True Immortality', helping science advance far enough to allow some humans to live indefinitely.
Her end goal was to upload the totality of human consciousness to a powerful cyber network and become an AI species. However, that seemed very pointless given the scope of what she had heard today.
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What use would the universe even have of an AI species? What it needed were corporeal forms to spelunk into that Chaos Realm or whatever to acquire the things that it desired. She had suppressed her anger and turmoil within during the whole time Ambrose was having his fun because she wanted to understand what was going on.
However, now that Felicia was on her own in a private space, she could finally sit down on the bed, kick off her heels, remove her coat and scream her anger out into a pillow until her voice became hoarse. The woman then collapsed on the bed and lay there silently for a while, not doing anything but sorting out her thoughts.
After a few minutes, she rose up and walked over to the terminal and pressed it on. She was also given the same prompt as Damon, and when asked what she wanted, her answer was concise.
"I want to understand the history and structure of the universe."
.......
Earth was currently not in a very good spot. The proverbial alien invasion had occurred, and despite the lack of any hostile actions, ignoring that one shitty prank, there were still those who had gone out to riot since the 'world had ended'.
In the Rothschild Manor, on a luxurious island, a young man was seated before a pool of beauties who were playing with each other and laughing. They were top models from around the world and women that the average bloke would have dreamed of a sexual encounter with them once.
Despite the announcement and the ongoing turmoil, the situation here didn't change. It wasn't that they were forcefully trying to cope, but this was the confidence that came from being under the umbrella of one of the strongest families on the planet.
Why should they scream and panic? Even young master Richard over there, a direct descendant of the Rothschild line, looked utterly bored, as if he had expected this. As such, they would stick to their script and make themselves sexy while having fun.
As for the young master in question, he was currently pondering internally. He was not panicking because the nature of this so-called invasion was far too peaceful. His family had bunkers all over the world, and the one on this island was state of the art.
Had Ambrose fired a single laser, he would have been rushed down post-haste, but since nothing of the sort had occurred, he remained placid. More importantly, once the message about the universe and the Intergalactic Union of All Species had been met out, most of those who were normally in control of their emotions worldwide had quickly found their calm.
They recognized that this was a different type of invasion. The type that would not sell well if written for a movie, and had been tried before by a popular media franchise about stars and wars.
This was a 'legal recruitment' invasion!
In other words, they were being introduced to intergalactic politics!
One might even call it disappointing when boiling the truth of the matter down to that.
People tended to overestimate themselves when danger was threatened or even hinted at. Would Party A really waste their money and men on Party B? The answer to that depended on what Party B had to offer that Party A might be interested in.
In this case, the Intergalactic Union was in possession of technology far beyond humanity's wildest dreams, even boasting about being able to take them right to the scale of a Level 2 Civilization.
For the purposes of astroscience, civilizations have been granted a ranking based on their energy development by the universe.
A Level 1 Civilization was one that had achieved infinite, renewable, clean and stable energy. It didn't matter whether that happened in the form of fusion, fission, solar, nuclear, or whatever energy. The key here was that energy would no longer be a problem for this civilization, and they only had to increase their output of it.
A Level 2 Civilization was one that harnessed their energy and miniaturized it, allowing it to be placed into spaceships and transport crafts to leave their planet and colonize their respective solar system. This required the almighty Dyson Sphere, a contraption that would allow a species to safely harness the energy of a star.
A Level 3 Civilization was one capable of completely expanding, conquering their entire galaxy and spreading out a species. It would be one to have harnessed energy equivalent to an entire galaxy, making them militarily, politically and financially powerful beyond measure.
A Level 4 Civilization was one that had completely colonized a fleet of galaxies, nebulas and all forms of livable space within their nearest range. They would be timeless and indestructible, and culling such a species would require godly effort. It was akin to saying that you, a single human, would stomp all the ants in the world to death.
A Level 5 Civilization was only possible in theory, as it would be one capable of controlling an entire universe, and since this was the only universe known to all species, obviously no one had achieved that, though there was definitely not a lack of effort in that regard.
As the Elf Kiisuo Vritu had rightly stated, humanity was not even at the Level 1 Civilization scale, rather on 0.75, making them practically equivalent to barbarians who still hadn't discovered fire in the eyes of the galaxy.
For what reason would they have to destroy us?