Chapter 612 A Wizard Did It  

Over the next few weeks, the researchers of Task Force Proxima conducted hundreds of different tests and learned a few things about the “root”. As it turned out, it was just one of an entire network of roots that covered the bottom of the entire ocean that they had jokingly named the New Australian Sea. After all, everything they knew lived in it had demonstrated that it was out to kill them, so the name seemed quite appropriate.

The root network was incredibly dense, with nearly a hundred percent coverage of the ocean floor, and each root itself was equally dense. The water pressure in the deepest part of the ocean—which was a full twenty kilometers deep—applied over ten million PSI of water pressure. But even at that depth, they’d learned (at the cost of a few submersible drones loaded with mana batteries) that the roots could still move with the same blinding, predatorial speed as they had near the surface when one had attacked the crewed lander. Another incidental discovery was that their tide hypothesis had been disproven. Proxima Centauri had little to no effect on the tides of the New Australian Sea. Instead, it now seemed as though the tides were driven by the roots as they twisted, turned, and writhed, seemingly inhaling and exhaling on a slow, but regular schedule.

That said, the star did play at least a minor role in the rise and fall of the tides. It just wasn’t the only factor that drove the rise and fall of the ocean.

The final discovery the researchers had made was the approximate age of the root network. From the instrument readings, the roots were only a few hundred thousand years old, which made for a dilemma. In order to grow to the kind of coverage they had, even going so far as to raise the sea level by entire kilometers and drown multiple continents, the roots should by all rights be millions of years old, not just hundreds of thousands.

And that age-related dilemma was the source of many arguments and debates among the scientific staff. The only reference they had, though, was comparing the alien roots’ growth with the growth of Earth’s flora. So the arguments eventually died down and the initial consensus was “a wizard did it”, or in other words, it was related to a function of mana that humanity simply hadn’t come into contact with yet. Apparently, super-dense mana plus a star that radiated primarily ultraviolet light equaled unimaginable plant growth speeds. It was almost like Miracle-Gro, only thousands of times more effective.

However, all of the information they were working with was from instrument scans only. None of it could be proved or disproved until they had actual, physical samples to work with. But based on the roots’ movement speed, density, and general irritability, actually getting those samples would likely prove to be a very difficult and arduous task. And that wasn’t even considering that the roots they needed samples of might also be sapient in some form or another; they still weren’t even sure they could rule that much out.

But they had all the time they could want, or at least as much time as the Powers That Be would allow them, which was subject to the whims of Fleet Admiral Bianchi and his staff. Thus, unable to make practical progress on the issue of the root network, it was unceremoniously shoved on the back burner until their protostellar forge was completed. (Ed note: Here, the concept of a stellar forge differs from most sci-fi novels that use the same reference, much less the Marvel Cinematic Universe version, though the MCU is far closer than others. It’s a method of using a star literally as a forge, not forging creations on a stellar scale. More details will be in future chapters; I don’t want to spoil you on it here as I personally think it’s a pretty cool concept the way Agent envisions it.)

The same couldn’t be said for samples from New Australia itself, however. The sole continent remaining above the surface of the New Australian Sea was lush with plants of all shapes and sizes, though lacking in multicellular life beyond plants that were so dark they practically glowed. Samples were taken there, and the landers they had modified to be remotely piloted flew from surface to ship in an almost unending stream to transport them.

After all, the plants on the continent were different from the roots on the ocean floor. Though they, too, had roots, they were of a much more normal sort than the beings that populated the seabed. Much smaller and weaker—and, more importantly, immobile—they served the same purpose as roots did for plant life on Earth. The trees and shrubs had taproots and whiskers, digging into the soil deeply enough to keep them stable, though they seemed to avoid the beaches and ocean.

It was almost like the ocean roots were predators that preyed on the roots of the plants on the land.

There was another curiosity that drove the scientists up a wall with frustration as well: the only multicellular life on the planet was plant life. Other than single-celled organisms, there was no fauna to match the flora.

The current leading theory on that thorny problem was that, much like on Earth, animal life had first evolved in the ocean. But given the demonstrated hostility of the New Australian Ocean’s seabed root network, it was likely that the roots had simply wiped out all the other creatures in a bid to ensure that the resources of the ocean—primarily its oddly rich mana density—belonged solely to them.

Still, given that the land flora showed no signs of either sentience or sapience, much less any hostility, it was decided that the land mass would soon be open to human exploration, so long as they avoided going anywhere near the ocean. So the exploration team decided to get a jump on the mission planning for their return to the surface in preparation for when the top brass authorized the trip.

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