Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics Chapter 6215: Mecha Soul Utopia (82)

Everyone present—people, cats, and the big squid—were all stunned.

From the humans’ point of view, how did this alien suddenly start speaking human language?

From the cats’ point of view, even squids can speak human language now, and they still can’t.

And from the other Ancient Ones’ point of view: Bro, why did you just let out a “meow”?

An Ancient One speaking human language is basically like a human speaking cat language. The information content is low, it’s hard to produce, and the sound is shrill. Even if they can use vibration-capable vocal organs to mimic similar sounds, they don’t really want to. It wears down the vocal apparatus too badly. It’s not like they only live a few decades and die—they still need to take care of their voices.

Bat Cat was the first to jump down. Because he’d noticed that the gear draped over this Ancient One was somewhat different from what they’d found before. The mechanical equipment on this one was clearly much more advanced. For one thing, it actually had a fully enclosed suit of armor, and it could hover; it probably also had a translator that converted the vibrations of their vocal cords into human speech.

This was highly unusual. On one hand, if the Ancient Ones had been capable of making more advanced gear, they might not have gone extinct. On the other hand, humans only appeared long after the Ancient Ones were completely wiped out, so while they were alive it would’ve been impossible for them to build a translator meant for communication with humans, let alone one that spoke English.

Unless this Ancient One hadn’t died like the rest of his kind, but had stayed alive all the way until humans appeared. But even that doesn’t explain how he ended up with equipment more advanced than his kin’s. After all, human tech has only developed to its current level, which still isn’t that advanced, so he’d have nowhere to learn it from.

Unless he didn’t learn it from the humans of this universe at all.

On this Ancient One’s armor, Bat Cat caught a faint shadow of an Iron Man suit.

Bat Cat wasn’t entirely sure whether this Ancient One could understand cat language. And even if he could, trying to communicate through speech would be way too inefficient. So Bat Cat simply used his own gear to link directly into the other’s equipment, and the two started exchanging information electronically, which was much faster.

After they’d communicated for a while, Bat Cat came over to tell Shiller what was going on, while that Ancient One went off to talk with the humans and his fellow kin.

“He once summoned Iron Man,” Bat Cat said. “In fact, the Shuggos route was actually viable. Among this group of aliens, some of the scientists noticed that Shuggos might not be so simple. They realized Shuggos could be a descendant of the Outer Gods.”

“When their entire species reached its most critical moment, they used a sample extracted from Shuggos to perform a summoning ritual. Some of the participants failed; some managed to connect with Yog, but ended up with their minds shattered from absorbing too much knowledge. But one lucky guy successfully contacted another blood relative of Shuggos—that would be Iron Man.”

“He went to the Eternal White Hole and met this Outer God who rules over steel and machinery, and from him he acquired a great deal of technology. Most importantly, Iron Man helped lift his curse, saved his life, and put him into a deep sleep that lasted until today.”

Bat Cat paused briefly, then continued, “He once begged Iron Man to lift the curse from all of them, but Iron Man’s reply was that he couldn’t. Iron Man told him that the being who cursed them was incredibly powerful—one of the top gods in the entire universe. The Ancient Ones’ curse had already sunk into their bones; there was no saving them.”

“However, that didn’t mean there was no hope for their species. To explain that, you have to start with the special structure of the Ancient Ones’ bodies. Back when their planet was breaking apart, they actually survived by using a very special method—a method that has also appeared on Earth, and is still being used by some organisms today. Maybe you’ve heard of jellyfish?”

“I’ve heard a little,” Shiller replied. Of course everyone’s heard of jellyfish as animals, but when it came to biological knowledge about jellyfish, Shiller knew very little.

“The reproductive process of jellyfish is fascinating,” Bat Cat said. “Some jellyfish have even achieved what humans would call immortality. Well, it only looks like immortality, technically it isn’t. What jellyfish rely on to pull this off is an extremely unusual mode of reproduction.”

“Scientists once did an experiment where they made the living conditions of hundreds of immortal jellyfish very harsh, or deliberately inflicted wounds on them. Without exception, all of the immortal jellyfish transformed into the polyp form—a special state of existence. Their mobility and activity decrease, but they become much better adapted to harsh environments. And this is what a polyp looks like.”

Bat Cat used the little screen on his device to show Shiller a picture. At a glance, Shiller thought it was an ID photo of an Ancient One. The appearance of the polyp and that of an Ancient One weren’t just slightly similar—they were practically identical.

Although the details were indeed different, the overall structure was strikingly similar: both looked sort of plant-like, with tentacles, and smaller tentacles sprouting from the ends of the main ones. Anyway, if a layperson saw photos of both, they’d probably conclude they were the same species.

Thinking back to what Bat Cat had said, Shiller asked, “So they escaped disaster by transforming their life form?”

“That’s right. This species actually has another biological form, one that’s closer to what they looked like before the catastrophe. It’s just that after their planet broke apart, the environment changed drastically, their population took a massive hit, and the ones that barely survived were just hanging on by a thread. So they turned themselves into another form, which is this current plant-like form that can live off inorganic matter.”

Bat Cat went on, “What we’re seeing now as the Ancient One is actually what they’ve become after degeneration forced them to change their life-form. They should have another jellyfish-form body, and it’s that form they used to cross the universe and fly to Earth.”

Shiller thought for a moment. He’d already found it odd before: this plant-like body of the Ancient One didn’t look particularly suited to long-distance travel. As long as the rules of the universe are what they are, what sort of shape works for flight is pretty much fixed. This sea-lily-like plant form of theirs obviously looks more suited to rooting itself somewhere, not zipping around the cosmos.

At the time, he figured maybe it was just a case of “strength makes bricks fly,” or maybe they relied on the magical power of the Ancient One’s crystals. After all, even among humans a few can cross the universe in the flesh; if the Ancient One species wanted to brute-force their way through space, it wasn’t impossible.

And also, back on the ice, the Ancient Ones were clearly struggling just to walk. They didn’t look like a life-form that could stay on land for long; their mobility was frankly pathetic. Even penguins have that one move where they slide along the ice, and they’re much faster than these guys. If the Ancient One’s only land-mobility is what Shiller saw, it doesn’t quite match the record of their past achievements.

Now it seemed they might have another form that’s faster and stronger, but for some reason they can no longer transform into it, leaving them stuck in this clumsy plant form.

That would also explain why the Ancient One is so riddled with existential anxiety. If it were just a bit of degeneration at the start, it shouldn’t have been enough to threaten the species’ survival. You could easily spin it as an adaptive change to fit into Earth’s environment—who knows, they might even have gained new advantages later. There was really no need to panic this hard over a minor change.

But if they’ve lost the ability to revert to their jellyfish form, that means they’ve lost any way to return to the cosmos. Because they never had spaceflight technology to begin with; they purely brute-forced their way here with their bodies. Once the body can’t do that anymore, they end up trapped on the surface—and that is indeed what happened.

“In their jellyfish form, they can fly faster than light.” Bat Cat dropped another bombshell. “Which means they don’t need an FTL engine at all—or rather, they themselves are the FTL ship, a life-form that can break through spatial barriers and temporal walls.”

“Hard to imagine,” Shiller sighed. “A species like that could actually end up in such a sorry state.”

“Nyarlathotep deserves major credit for that. Nya didn’t only set his eyes on them after they arrived on Earth,” Bat Cat said. “From the moment they discovered the great white space, the fate of this species was already sealed.”

Shiller understood: if Nya wanted to seize the Eternal White Hole, of course he would persecute the Ancient One. First step would be to strip them of their proud ability to roam the universe, because only then could he make them believe in a god at all—only then did he have a chance to control them.

The tragedy of the Ancient One is that they weren’t powerful enough to handle the schemes of an Outer God, yet they thought themselves already powerful enough to fear nothing. Given how superior their species once was, that kind of arrogance isn’t surprising.

Shiller didn’t think the Ancient One was just bragging to Bat Cat. In the Marvel-Comic-like world, plenty of humans can exceed the speed of light; a species having that ability at its peak isn’t exactly out of line.

“The key to breaking the game lies in changing their form,” Bat Cat said. “Their reproduction method is very jellyfish-like—they spread spores. As long as you can get the spores to grow into the jellyfish form instead of the polyp form, there’s still hope.”

“Is that even possible?” Shiller was skeptical. If lifting the curse through breeding actually worked, why wouldn’t the Ancient Ones have tried it? They’ve been weakened for hundreds of millions of years—they must have tried every method they could think of. If anything worked, they wouldn’t be in this state now.

Bat Cat shook his head. “The key is hybridization.”

A question mark practically popped up over Shiller’s head.

Bat Cat continued, “Their own genes have already been locked. No matter what they do, they can’t produce any more jellyfish-form offspring. But what if they crossbreed with another species?”

“What species could they even crossbreed with?” Shiller couldn’t help asking. “They’re not an Earth species at all; they should have reproductive isolation from everything here.”

“Not from the Outer Gods,” Bat Cat said. “Outer Gods reproduce through ‘divine intercourse.’ No matter what shape the physical body takes, there’s no reproductive isolation. They’re practically the perfect hybrid parent.”

Shiller was speechless. The idea sounded somewhat plausible. Even with his limited biology knowledge, he’d at least heard of hybrid vigor. But something about it was still bizarre. Using the fact that Outer Gods lack reproductive isolation as a lever to engineer hybrids? Isn’t that a bit… too scientific?