- I want to look up at the blue sky.

- I want to look at the stars.

- I want to touch the clouds.

- I want to catch the wind with my hands.

One longing after another is churning, one desire after another is shouting.

Different people, different desires, different desires and hesitations.

With sorrow, with anger, with hope, with determination.

All emotions resonated with Ian, and he felt all the emotions at this moment, and that indescribable complex longing was so similar to him.

Imprisoned in this land, surrounded by spirits bound by gravity, those who have powerful technology but don't want to take the slightest step, but start war against other countries...... Each of them made him sad and angry.

But......

'He' can't see it.

His blonde hair turned pale gray, and the sturdy man with sky-blue eyes turned into an old man, but he still couldn't open the door to the outside world, and the redwood base was like a cage, locking him in this comfortable but decaying underground space.

Yes, it's cosy and comfortable.

Yes, he is in high positions here.

Yes, he has great power and the reverence of the people.

Yes, he's been to the pinnacle of life – he can do anything.

Except for what he wanted to do.

And......

He was dying.

[Won't it be okay to send my body out of the ruins when I'm dead?] ]

[Grand Elder...... Your body itself is our most important legacy, what if a mutated creature from the outside world devours your body and obtains the bloodline key? If nothing else, your appendage is definitely going to be recycled.]

The corpse itself is also property, this is a normal fact, the body of the Sequoia people needs to be specially treated before it can be buried, because the various nano vaccines in their bodies, special immune viruses and photosymbiotic bacteria are all technologies left over from the previous era, once exposed to the outside world, although it is not an ecological disaster, but it will definitely have adverse effects.

And the possession of the memory of the inheritance must be taken down after death and uploaded to the memory.

But for the Sequoias, taking off the appendage is equivalent to taking off half of their soul, what do they want to do with that mutilated body?

[Okay, I see......]

No one could hear the faint despair in the Great Elder's tone.

And decisively.

So, two years later, the automatic production line was suddenly destroyed due to an accident.

Immediately afterwards, the restraint lock of the ecological park was destroyed.

The two anomalous crises have made everyone in the entire Sequoia base anxious, and the automatic production line is okay to say, after all, there are skills in the brain, whether it is remanufactured or repaired, it is not difficult to remanufacture or repair, at most it is a waste of time, and it is necessary to mine and smelt metals.

But the ecological park has been destroyed, and the alien creatures inside are mixed, which is enough to create a second-level ecological crisis here!

While dealing with this huge upheaval, no one noticed that some extremely confidential genetic samples had been taken from the laboratory deep in the ecological park.

Then, as if bad things weren't enough, one after another, some Sequoia people disappeared.

They suddenly disappeared one night, silently, making everyone nervous, thinking that they were aliens and individuals left behind in the ecological park, and now they were attacking them.

Guards in armor patrol day and night, but people continue to disappear.

Until one day, a person was found by the escort in the process of leaving, but this person had lost his will, his mind was completely disordered, and his mouth was speaking out of his mouth, as if he was completely insane.

After a detailed medical examination, everyone was shocked to find that the appendage brain behind the person's brain stem had mutated, and the semi-psionic slug, which was supposed to be extremely stable, actually began to devour the human brain and attempt to replace it.

After careful investigation, the Sequoia people were horrified to discover that all the missing people had disappeared on the other side of the H-55 underwater channel, which is the source of the ornamental river, a small tributary of the power group cooling channel.

There, in the water purification plant, there is a hill of corpses, and a small biological laboratory that has been established for a long time.

Among them, many of the instruments are classified as top secret, and only exist in the Pre-Era Lab, which requires a keycard to pass, and there is only one person who can open the lab without a request.

That was their leader, Grand Elder Sequoia.

[What are you doing?!] Madara Gunsen, why are you doing this!? ]

[Eternal Life]

[Are you crazy?!] It's not eternal life at all, you're just turning yourself into an echo, even if you can actually burn your soul into the psychic network of the brain, and become a mirror...... You've become a collection of wills that possess your brain, not who you are now! ]

[I don't care]

[What...... What? ]

[I said, I don't care]

- I don't care if I'm human or not, I don't care if it's immoral or not, I don't care if it destroys the ecological balance of the Sequoia base.

- I don't care about you, and I don't care about myself.

- Life, soul, memory, self, these things are all shit, all garbage, only produce despair and pain, can the hive network carry the whole me? Ridiculous, what if you can't? Only you boring fools would dwell on such trivial matters, and it's no wonder you're still comfortable in this catacomb.

- I can't see it, it's a pity, but at least the newborn life can leave here, with an immortal body, with an immortal soul.

- Then, go and look at the stars.

The white cocoon of flesh wrapped in fluorescent crystals and living metal was agitating, as if it wanted to reach out and reach out over the ruins of the depths of the earth, over the layers of rock and the churning sea.

It wants to reach out and touch, to touch the real wind, to touch the clouds in the sky.

Touch the stars above the clouds, above the firmament.

This is its desire, and it is the wish of the person who created it, and even all those who have become a part of it.

Those who didn't say it, who didn't really think about it, who said 'I don't want to leave the base', have the most sincere wishes in their hearts.

- Even apes look up at the stars, let alone people?

Intense emotions, I don't know if it was despair or the spirit of enlightenment, hit Ian's heart.

Was it a frank statement, or a roar of rage? Unbeknownst to him, the phantom of the past swept through his mind, causing a violent emotional shock.

It also resonates with the teenager from the heart.

[We are one kind...... We are the same......]

A voice sounded, with sincere emotion: [We all yearn for the distance, for those things we don't see on a daily basis......]

[The ruins are a cage, life is a cage, morality is a cage, the flesh is also a cage, and the sky is not also a cage?] ]

[We need to break free from the cage and break the shackles...... We are the same...... I can know that you're just like me......]

The invisible hive will reached out its own psionic energy and flesh tentacles, and rushed towards Ian, who was standing in place, as if embracing.

From the flesh and blood figures that had been chopped up, there were threads like nerves and blood vessels that stretched out, stretching forward with a spore-like texture, trying to climb on the boy's face.

[Let's unite...... We will be one, immortal one......]

[Let's break free from the cage together......]

But these tentacle spores were cut off by a bladeless sword.

Ian held his sword in silence, he was visibly still immersed in the psychic shock created by the Hive's will—an extremely special psionic skill that relied on empathy and empathy to activate, and as long as there was some slight similarity in thinking, it would gradually begin to erode from it.

No, not erosion, not parasitism.

It's about contributing.

The Hive Will shares everything about itself with Ian, that's not an attack, there's no hostility, as long as they have the same mood and the same resonance, they're one, they're one will...... If Ian's spirit is strong enough to get rid of the influence of other soul fragments, he can become a hive.

Become a true hive will.

But he still raised his sword, and the light golden sword light cut off all the tentacles and the beginning of a path of destiny.

"Ahem......"

The boy looked up, gasping for breath in embarrassment, staring at the white cocoon in front of him, coughing up a blood-smelling breath.

There, a huge brain was uttering a silent lament, and it couldn't figure out why, when the life in front of it was so similar, that they had the same dreams, that they had the same desires, and that it was even ashamed of itself, because the madness in the soul of the young man in front of it could outweigh its thousand-year-long persistence.

So, why?

The answer is actually quite simple.

"We do have similarities, but we are different."

His eyes were like stars, and Ian was surrounded by a blue-gold essentia halo, and there was no anger, no sympathy, no mockery, only a faint trace of compassion.

The young man raised his sword solemnly, and the inscriptions on the heavy abyss iron sword lit up one by one, and the light golden light shone with a unique light under the silver-blue glow-green radiant light.

Ian breathed deeply, as if communicating with the will of the hive in front of him, and as if he was talking to himself.

"Because I know the truth, I know what the future looks like, and I am the one who lives in the future," he said. ”

He said: "In the world a thousand years later, human beings are still repeating boring wars, repeating themselves in the cycle under the sun, and they never tire of it. ”

"I'm not craving," he said. I'm convinced. I don't want to touch the stars, I have to find them. ”

He said: "The will of the hive, whether you are a fragment or a newborn life - I don't care if you believe it or not, I will tell you." ”

"There are no stars out there."

"Our world is enveloped in the heavenly prison of the stars, and the canopy of heaven is pitch black, where there is no guidance, there is no heaven and distance, there is no brilliance to be excited, and the starry sky you imagine does not exist from the beginning."

- I know this, and you don't know, you just imagine.

- You may be lost, you may be at a loss.

- And I've decided, made up my mind, to still move forward, still to climb.

Instead, Ian laughed, and he smiled heartily, heartily, but enough to be called crazy: "But so what? I don't care about these things, it doesn't matter if it's a cosmic monster or a subspace scourge out there, only a boring fool cares about the minutiae. ”

"I will definitely find the truth and go to the heavens."

"That's what makes us different."