Chapter 561: Will
"So this is Birca?"
Hades had touched down on the surface, and the group now stood on the lunar ground itself.
The ground was remarkably soft, nothing but loose yellow sand. It was not so different from a desert.
Rising from that expanse of sand were the crooked, tilting tips of buildings poking through the surface.
"I can feel it," Brett said, looking downward. "Beneath the sand, deeper still beneath the soil and rock, there is a vast hollow space. That must be where the Bircan civilization once stood."
For reasons Brett could not explain, the moon had plenty of breathable air but no atmosphere to filter sunlight. Because of that, the entire surface was bleached and pale. Perhaps the Bircans had done something to make the air possible, but regardless, the absence of an atmosphere meant the surface itself was nearly uninhabitable. The Bircan nation had been built underground.
"Underground, then," Rayleigh said, stroking the beard on his chin. "So how exactly do we get down there?"
"We carve a path."
The corner of Brett's mouth curved upward.
He shifted into dragon-human form and released his flame clouds. What looked like ordinary clouds were anything but — they had physical substance, could interact with solid matter, and were capable of lifting an entire island into the sky. Now they gathered and condensed in the air above the sandy surface.
The cloud mass bunched together, then began stretching and elongating, top and bottom pulling apart.
It twisted into a spiral.
It looked exactly like a drill bit.
"Open us a way down."
Brett snapped his fingers, and the clouds began to spin.
It had become a colossal drill.
The soft sand put up no resistance whatsoever against the massive spinning cloud-drill bearing down on it. It bored straight through, opening a huge hole in the ground. The clouds kept pushing deeper, and as they descended, Brett left portions of the cloud mass behind to brace the tunnel walls and keep the sand from collapsing inward.
"Are these things actually clouds?" Shanks muttered, scratching his head.
But he had to admit the ability was absurdly convenient.
In short order, Brett had already carved a passage straight down to the ancient Bircan ruins far below.
"Let's go. Down we go."
Brett released another wave of clouds.
The tunnel dropped straight down, but with Brett here there was no need to carve a sloped path for everyone to walk along. He simply wrapped the group in clouds and let them descend together, following the drill's path downward.
As they sank, he kept releasing more clouds to shore up the tunnel around them.
It did not take long before the drill clouds below dissolved completely. Their task was done. They left behind a deep opening, and below that opening was a wide, dark, silent space.
"Is this really where the Bircans came from?"
Rayleigh looked around.
He could not see anything.
There was no light source anywhere in the space. The faint glow filtering down through the tunnel above barely reached a few feet before fading entirely. No matter where he looked, no matter how wide he opened his eyes, there was nothing but darkness.
"This should be the place."
Brett flicked his wrist. A flash of brilliant lightning leaped from his hand, lit up the space in an instant, and slammed into the far black wall.
Then.
A low hum.
And then light appeared throughout the space all at once.
Lamps were coming on everywhere.
The scene below became fully visible.
Spread across the floor of this vast underground chamber, stretching away further than the eye could comfortably follow, was an entire city. Buildings extended in every direction. They were not especially tall, and their architecture was utterly unlike anything found on the Blue Sea.
"Oh!" Dr. Vegapunk's eyes went wide. "They were out of power! That's all it was!"
"Well then, we can have a proper look around the city," Shanks said with a quiet laugh.
"Wait — what is that?"
Rayleigh was staring at the streets below, clearly startled.
Small figures were pouring out from the alleyways and gathering on the streets below. One after another they came, little robots with large round eyes, all looking up at Brett and the others.
"The things the Bircans left behind!" Vegapunk was immediately beside himself with excitement. "Brett, Brett, put me down there right now, I need to study them properly!"
Brett smiled and didn't refuse. He maneuvered the clouds to lower Vegapunk to the ground below, and left a large cluster of flame clouds hovering beside him.
In the original story, these automatons had been perfectly friendly toward Enel when he activated them. But who could say for certain there would be no surprises here? If something unexpected happened, those clouds would be Vegapunk's insurance.
"Then let's take a walk through the city."
Brett smiled.
"Absolutely!"
Shanks lit up like a child hearing good news.
And so they wandered through the empty city.
It was genuinely empty. Every house they entered had nothing in it beyond the most basic furniture. The workshops and factories they passed were completely stripped bare, not a scrap of material left behind. The Bircans had apparently taken everything with them when they left.
Brett and the others found nothing of particular interest as they moved through the streets.
If there was one thing worth noting, it was a series of murals they discovered in what appeared to be a city hall.
The murals told the broad outline of the Bircan story. The first sparks of technology, the long climb of scientific progress, then the resource overconsumption that degraded their world, and finally the decision to abandon their home and migrate to the Blue Sea.
The artwork itself was nothing remarkable. But more than one person standing there looking at it fell quiet.
"They came to the Blue Sea looking for a new home," Rayleigh said softly. "And who could have imagined that their arrival would set off everything that followed?"
Everything. All of it. It had started with the Bircan migration.
"And they lost everything in the process," Brett added.
The Bircans had not vanished entirely. Their descendants still lived across the Sky Islands. But those descendants had long since forgotten the civilization that built this place. They had not inherited the Bircans' advanced technology. They had barely even preserved the history.
Birca, as a civilization, was gone.
"Though what we're about to do could be seen as carrying on their will," Brett said, and smiled. "Just like the doctor said — building an age where technology brings something better to everyone."
"Yeah."
Shanks and Rayleigh both nodded quietly.
What you couldn't finish back then — let us carry it forward from here.