TF Chapter 55 Landing
***Nathaniel***
"Did you see those aliens?! Are we really supposed to survive on the same planet as them?!"
Bora was gesturing wildly, a fact that she was very worked up. Her nervousness and fear was painted on her face very vividly.
I couldn't find the energy to blame her because even I had been shocked by the sheer physicality of the aliens. Just a single blow and am sure we wouldn't be able to survive. And the intelligent ones weren't the most troublesome since they mostly kept to their small communities. The beasts were another matter altogether, mostly those ones which roamed around without any territory. There was a very high chance of running into them.
"Hey! Your disease of nervousness is spreading to me. Can it!" Danny shouted.
"What stupidity are you up to now? If you are also nervous, just admit it! Don't say such useless things!" She shouted back.
"I am not nervous! You are just spreading it to me! You have to know that I am a brave and courageous soul!"
"Heh! Danny, I can see your knees shaking."
"That's just a figment of your imagination!"
"Hahahahaha...see, you are also nervous and fearful!"
"I already told you! You are the one spreading it to me!"
...
Their bickering brought a certain warmth to me. As I watched their increasingly escalating argument, my face broke into a small smile. How great it would be if they could get along normally just like this!
Too bad wherever we were going, I had the instinctual feeling that we weren't about to have any peaceful days for these kinds of antics. I wondered how my cousin was doing. I hadn't gotten the courage to contact her because she would most definitely see through me. I didn't want her to witness the changes that had happened to me.
"All apprentices should step into their pods!"
An authoritative voice spoke from the front of the ship. The forgers had figured out a method to send people onto planet Forge after some time. The method was to place people into pods filled with liquid and force absorbent foam, then launching them towards the planet, where gravity would take hold.
It was scary, but so far they had reassured us that none had died so far. I was skeptical about that though. Bora, the one with the logical mind had even scoffed at such claims at the time.
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I bid farewell to the two before each of us entered our respective pods. Each could only carry a single occupant. But they had promised that they would make sure that teams weren't separated by great distances from each other. And they had emphasized that only by gathering together would we have a chance of survival.
I settled into the the pod before a transparent liquid was injected into it. I was wearing a skin tight body suit whose tenacity and durability far surpassed anything I had ever worn before, except the nano suit. But this was still the only thing that they had come up with that would at least protect us a little without the nano suit.
After a few minutes, I lost consciousness.
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A force propagated through the liquid before assaulting my body. The unconscious me was abruptly pulled from that state and awakened by the force.
There was no mechanism to open the pod so I moved my hands and moved a lever close to me. The moment I did though, I was pushed to the front, where I spilled from the pod with the liquid. Steam immediately appeared, obscuring the surroundings due to the high heat in the crater.
I hurriedly chased away the disorientation to get a good look at my bearings before spotting a trail of smoke a distance away. It probably came from one of the two pods, that of Bora or Danny.
I took a step, causing me to almost stumble to the ground because of the high gravity of the planet. I felt as if everything in my body was heavier, as if I was carrying a burden, but it wasn't to the point of being unbearable.
It was a good thing that I hadn't landed in a clearing, but the middle of what I would have liked to call a forest.
I climbed out of the crater, passing a few smoldering and burning organic matter. The trees here had dark stems which were dotted with blue specks of light, probably some sort of symbiotic algae that glowed. Looking at them reminded me of a clear night sky without any light pollution.
Even though I could see the trail of smoke in the distance, I didn't hurry to move towards it, instead opting to observe the depths of the dark forest around me with caution. The sun was shining, but most of the ecosystem on this planet had developed to have minimal need of it, a reason that caused this jungle to have canopies that entirely obscured the ground from the sky. We had already been warned that most of the beasts made their habitats within the forests.
Waiting for night or moving during day were all useless strategies as the beasts and aboriginals had developed to the point where they didn't need light. According to the information I had read, their evolutionary path diverged to manifest things like eyes, nose or even ears! They only relied on their spirit, mouths and the ability to breathe through skin.
Fear started to take hold of me as I peered into the dark depths of the forest. Hurriedly averting my gaze, I decided to move my sight to the destructive trail left by the pod before it had managed to come to a rest.
Badump!
The rise of my heart rate entered my ears as I focused on one of the pieces of organic matter. I hurriedly made my way towards it, not before coating the outside of my body with my spirit as that was the first thing they had drilled within us.
I moved with haste, not forgetting to take into account my surroundings. The soil didn't have that much of a difference from that of earth, except more muddy in nature where I had dropped. The searing temperatures of my crash had caused that in the vicinity to harden, but trekking through the forest was going to be a pain in the ass considering the doubled weight on my body.
Even as I got closer to the remaining corpse of the creature, I took special measure to try and sense the surface of my body with my spirit and tried to fine tune it so that I could get used to the gravity faster. If I was slow, I would be consuming too much energy otherwise. They had removed the ATP organ, after notifying us that every living creature on the planet was edible, even the aboriginals. Though, I wouldn't want to eat sentient creatures...wouldn't that be equal to cannibalism?