The huge room contained rows of vehicles, not just your ordinary vehicle. The vehicle had tracks and a turret, it was a tank, in particular Main Battle Tank. The tank was an older model of the Main Battle Tank used by the Duchy of Lorien’s military. Duchy Lorien’s military used a different model of a tank than most of the Galactic Imperium military. The Galactic Imperium used Tauris Mk. X while the Loriens used Candidum Mk. 34.

There were only around 25 tanks in the garage. All of them looked functional and could be used. However, checkup and maintenance were needed to ensure they were working fine. This mission to eradicate the bandits turned out to be a scavenger hunt where they found a motherload of equipment and weaponry at the end of their journey. Lucas sent a messenger back to Petersburg, he told the messenger that he would be staying at the facility for a while and ordered William to take care of everything while he was absent.

Lucas wanted to keep this facility a secret. The less people knew about this place, the better. He would tell all of the members of his ship, William and Asher as well as the Novgorod’s knights. While he stayed there, he looked around the facility and found another armoury.

Looking at the rifles in the armoury, he planned to train all the knights of Novgorod on how to use the rifle. It would give them a massive advantage against the enemy. He also planned to train the knights on how to use the tanks. He returned to the Facility Commander’s room and looked at the other entries in the computer.

He found entries about the inventories of the supplies of the base, it was reported the base, before the rebellion, was restocked with a year's worth of supplies of food and drinks. Regarding the military supplies, the base had around 7.000 rifles, 4.000 support weapons and 100 tanks, as well as the ammunition for those weapons and vehicles.

“This base is stacked. But… I read before about the other hiding spot or evacuation place for the Imperial Family, but it was redacted. I wonder where it is?” Lucas said as he browsed the computer.

Lucas wondered about the other place that was prepared for the Imperial Family evacuation in case of rebellion. Could there be a stash of supplies like this base as well? Lucas browsed the computer more and he found an entry titled, Terrasia.

Terrasia, the New Earth.

Since we arrived at this planet, our leader, Jorgum Lorien has led us to colonise this planet. This planet has 3 continents, Europa, Antreia and Mernia; those are the names we give to the continents. We first landed in the continent we called Antreia and from there we expanded to colonise the whole planet.

If we ever reunited with the Galactic Imperium again, I’m sure we will be written in history as the first humans to meet an intelligent alien civilization. That’s right, we can proudly declare ourselves as the first humans to find and communicate with an alien civilization. They called themselves Elsewen. Not a lot was known about them as they won’t divulge much of their history to us. The Elsewen is a humanoid species. They looked like humans, but they had different bodily features than humans. They are, in general, taller than humans, and their ears are long and pointy and they have great hearing and vision. Their hair colour was rather distinctive, when they were born their hair was red and as they grew it turned blonde. In their tradition. when their hair completely turns blonde, they are considered an adult. Both males and females of Elsewen grew their hair long and had a long life span.

They populated the Europa continent. We were able to communicate with them thanks to the technology from Galactic Imperium that made it possible to translate their language into our own language. Jorgum Lorien made contact with the leader of the elves. Later, our Emperor, Jorgum Lorien, made a pact with Elsewen’s leaders. The pact was that the Europa Continent would not be littered with our modern buildings and industry, in fact, Jorgum would ensure limited construction and infrastructure in the Europa Continent. That’s why the Europa Continent was bare of buildings and infrastructure as the Emperor himself made it clear that he did not want to build and destroy nature on the continent.

Osten and Westwald Continents were different. Both of those places became the places where we, humans, excavated the resources of the planet and built buildings and infrastructure to be used by our civilization. In the first hundred years, we grew and grew and were able to adapt to this planet. However, there was no sign of the Galactic Imperium, the Emperor felt that we were indeed stranded far away from the territory of the Galactic Imperium and decided to mothball the ships we used to travel to space. All of those ships were submerged and kept near the island where the Royal Capital was located.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

This entry gave Lucas a good overview of the planet and the lost Lorien expedition. Looking at the entry for Elsewen's race, the elves that Ariana told him about were probably them.

If this alien civilization survived, they might have records of the history of the Lilium Empire and more about their interaction with the human race. One thing Lucas hoped was they were not hostile towards the human race. Fortunately. looking at the elves who sometimes interacted with a village in the kingdom, meant that they bore no hostility to the human race.

Lucas leaned back on the chair, he observed the room. The place was a little bit dusty, but most of it was clean. It was surprising because this facility had been left stranded for centuries. As he had been thinking since they found this facility, could it be possible to repair their spaceship to enable them to explore the systems around them?

Lucas browsed through the computer again, he found entries of reports, logs and diaries from the Facility Commander who was also the Commander of the 111th Division. There was nothing interesting that caught Lucas’s attention until he found a document containing the drawn map of the planet.

Lucas felt as if he had struck a gold vine. The map from the old world would be helpful to locate the ruins or whatever was left of the Lilium Empire. There could be a stash of weapons like this one or anything that could be useful. Lucas wanted to find out what caused the rebellion to happen in the Lilium Empire. Yes, the commander of the 111th Division wrote in his entry that the military did the rebellion and essentially destroyed the Empire. But, one thing he did not understand was, what happened after that.

What caused the collapse of the society and civilization of the Empire? Lucas thought as he looked at the drawn map on the computer. Lucas could not find any reason, way or possibility that the civilization of this planet, in an instant, went backwards to the mediaeval age. It could not be Memory Wipe since the technology was acquired by the Loriens centuries after the disappearance of the expedition.

Then a thought dawned on him, Could it be that there were other devices like that? Memory Wipe was a device created by Roktarian Ascendency and for some reason, the device could completely or partially wipe people’s memory. The House of Lorien was able to acquire the device, harness the capability of the device and use it to their advantage. The most recent use of the device was when they erased the memory of the whole population of the Galactic Empire about Lucy Lorien and her kidnapping accident as well as the incident following her death. Everyone, except the Loriens as well as a select few individuals who were loyal to the Loriens, had their memory wiped.

Another cause for the backwardness of the civilization that he could think of was the near destruction of humanity on this planet. Lucas guessed the rebellion caused a massive war that almost brought humankind on this planet to complete destruction. For Lucas, this was the only logical explanation. If this was true, Lucas hoped there was still a record left by those who survived the war.

Lucas wondered if the Royal Family of the Romanovia Kingdom had any records of the survivors of the war. But first, Lucas had to apologise and make up with Anastasia for his insolence towards her mother; even though she had forgiven her by revoking his banishment. The earliest Lucas planned to return to the Royal Capital would be at the coronation banquet in a few months.

The map showed there were 3 military bases in the Europa Continent and one of those was within the Romanovia Kingdom, excluding the 111th Lilium Army Base. One of the bases was in the place Lucas least expected, it was right at the location of the Royal Capital of the Romanovia Kingdom.

“The capital is built on a ruined base? That's interesting. But, there was no visible sight of the ruin of the base. Ah, the underground structure, they should be intact.”

The base on the map was labelled ‘7th Division Army Base’. From the diary of the Commander of the 111th Division, the 7th Division took part in the rebellion and was the one who was able to capture and hold the Europa Continent by defeating the 2 divisions on the continent. Together with reinforcement from other divisions on the rebel side, the 7th Division attacked the 111th Division’s base. The commander guessed that the rebels were able to discover the base when they captured the Capital and found the base’s secret location.

Moving north of the Europa Continent, Lucas was able to discover the area where he coined the Unknown Area on this planet. The area was an archipelago with one big island labelled, The Royal Capital.

But, why was the place protected with an anti-detection defence system, Lucas thought, the technology from centuries ago would be easily countered by the current technology of the Galactic Empire equipped in my ship.