Eventually, he overcame his awe, and turned to Jeffrey and Lao.
“If only this was not caused by something as hideous as the Legion. There is certainly a sort of austere beauty to it,” Lao said to the others looking down into the hole. “I can feel the energy of thousands of tortured souls here, lingering in this place. They must have belonged to the Legion members who had manned the ships.”
Sam narrowed his eyes and looked off towards the horizon, getting a good look at the black shapes that he had seen in the distance from the faction headquarters. There were about five of them, massive ships that were about the size of a city. They were shaped like oblong citadels, with a tapered point in the center, and a wider base.
There had likely been more, but the blast had destroyed them utterly, leaving no visible trace. All five of the ships were almost completely destroyed, with barely anything left of them save for their bases, which jutted out of the water like cliffs in the distance, casting a shadow over the land. They were spread out in a semicircle off the coast, as if they had been pushed back by the explosion that had leveled the surrounding area.
The sea was tainted with nuclear light, and millions of dead fish floated on the surface, barely visible even to Sam’s enhanced sight. It merely looked like a slick of black on top of a sea of light green liquid. A lank breeze picked up around them as Sam took a step forwards, balancing on the edge of the cliff. The ground was pitted for miles around the crater, and barely anything had escaped the damage. It was almost entirely leveled, and nothing stirred within sight. Sam could barely imagine what would have happened had the energy not mostly gone up into the atmosphere.
Even here, there was a visible hole in the sky, breaking through the ozone layer, and revealing the pure light of space. UV light streamed down over the landscape, giving it a ghostly hue to Sam’s eyes. He couldn't really see it, but his Elemental Sight ability gave him some bonuses.
Sam went back to pick up the ship, and then headed back towards the side of the hill, wondering if it was safe to descend. He sighed, and kept walking, heading down the hill. The others followed in his wake, and they all descended together.
Hill had perhaps been a bit of an understatement, which Sam was realizing as soon as he got a good look. It had once been small, only about fifty feet tall, but on the end facing the crater it extended down for almost a thousand feet. He descended down the side, making sure to not to fall. It probably wouldn't even harm him, but he wanted to stay with the others in order to ensure their safety. He was confident that he could take on anything here but he wasn't sure about the new recruits. All he knew about the alien captains was that they had been appointed by Talnor, who was a man that Sam trusted. He would respect his word in this situation, given that he was probably the second strongest fighter now in the entire faction. Given the way that it was divided up however, there was little intrusion on Sam’s original captains. In any case, the newcomers had not done anything to divest themselves of his trust yet, and he was fine with them refusing to speak much.
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They were out of their element here, in a foreign world, surrounded by strange people and a strange landscape. Talnor had told him that the home planet of his people was covered in purple oceans, and cities floated in the clouds, buoyed up by exotic elements and minerals within those clouds, which were more like a form of ultra light rock than anything else. Such descriptions only inflamed Sam’s desire to explore the Multiverse, but that would come later. For now, he had work to do.
They reached the bottom of the hill a few minutes later, and paused to look at the landscape ahead of them. The ground was almost impassable in places, and there were only a few narrow avenues to progress upon. The ground was warm to the touch, and it seemed to retain some of the original heat and power of that titanic blast that had leveled the area. Pockets of the green radioactive gasses that Sam had seen from the top of the hill were everywhere, and he purposefully charted a path to avoid that.
He explained his plan to the others, who all followed in his footsteps, in order to reach safety. They walked along the irradiated patches of rock and churned earth in silence, not wanting to speak while in a place like this. It felt disrespectful in a way, as if this had been the place of some great war or conflict that had long since ended.
Sam knew that they were just being superstitious, but it was better to be safe in any case. Besides, there was not really much to talk about in this situation. As they closed in on the crater, the heat began to grow around them, until it was easily a few hundred degrees in temperature. Sam was perfectly fine, but Lao started to sweat a little bit. The man set up a simple heat exchange field with his Dao, and managed to wick the heat away from him, rendering him cool again. His Dao really was quite overpowered, and was perhaps the most versatile among anyone within the faction. The concept of Reciprocity was so large that almost anything could be achieved with it, providing that one had the right amount of power.
Sam stopped ogling the other man, and kept walking, apprehensive about what they would find in the crater. They would have to circumnavigate the actual hole in the ground, but he still wanted to have a good look at it, just in case there was anything valuable in its depths. The System loved to give rewards for braving great danger, and there was no reason why this was any different.