The fusion thruster, one of the most advanced thrusters in humanity's history, blasts through the atmosphere. Angel Frame type Arcana, The Fool, one who embodies the beginning of all arcana, the first card in the deck, spreads its mechanical wings. The once-slumbering machine is awakened by the wish of a boy from Ungrath, a boy who has seen war and misery since a young age under the ignorant eyes of the Empire that governs them.
As Silver, who is in the cockpit of The Fool, feels his body pinned down to the seat, after a couple of minutes his body adapts. The cockpit, which previously was confusing with many buttons and handles he did not even understand how to use, now displays detailed explanations every time his eyes focus on them. He can also feel like he sees the sky blur past him, the scenery and the distant horizon right into his eyes, like he is watching from The Fool's eyes. He feels like he can see the world as The Fool. Machine and human, pilot into one, that is the wonder of the Neural Link.
The Maternum Core engine, a rare fusion engine using the Maternum element, a rare element found in some stars across the universe, uses the Maternum's unique effect, where it can bind the dark matter around it on a molecular level, making a fusion with its own element, creating a kind of constant nuclear fusion. But with the Maternum element's unique ability to bind even dark matter, the constant energy outburst from the nuclear fusion of elements happening inside of it gets suppressed by its own unique properties, creating a fragile balance, and that constant fusion is what powers the Maternum Core.
The fusion thruster of the Maternum Engine does not produce the same explosive effect as the usual Angel thruster. The Maternum Engine powered thruster releases a jet of chaff-like particles, giving it thrust and also a radar disruption effect, making the Angel Frame using such an engine practically invisible on radar. The Fool Angel Frame breaks through Ungrath's atmosphere, now in orbit around five kilometers from Ungrath's smallest moon, Gorgath, the moon said in the history of the Ungrath planet to have been created by humans long before Silver was born.
"Wait, you said we are going into a Seraphim-Class Battleship. All Seraphim-Class Battleships are owned by the Empire. Why would you set the course there? I said go somewhere safe, AUDAL," Silver said as he gathered his thoughts, his awe set aside after thinking of what AUDAL had said to him earlier.
[ Confirmed / Correction / Uploading data / Calculating / Finished / From your memory data, I can see that the Empire has 14 Seraphim-Class, with 6 of them originating from the First Unification War / The Seraphim-Class Battleship, Codename: Ark Noir, is not recorded as one of them / Correction / The Ark Noir is not recorded, as by the time the war ended, the Ark Noir had not yet been completed, and its records were... erased / Source of info: Original AUDAL database, combined with your memory, Silver / Would you like me to readjust the course ... ] AUDAL explained as she, the one piloting The Fool, stopped while waiting for Silver's order.
Silver, who just listened to AUDAL's gentle explanation, felt the Angel Frame stop. He saw that he was now in orbit around the Ungrath planet, close enough to see the surface of Gorgath, one of Ungrath's nine moons. Silver was lost in his thoughts. "Has not been built? Meaning it is the last of the six original Seraphim? No, the seventh original Seraphim. But why is it here? And how can you detect its position?" asked Silver in confusion, as he did not know anything and seemed lost. Even with his quick thinking and brainstorming about the information he had gotten, Silver couldn't find any answers.
[ Processing question / Confirmed / Would you like me to explain the history in my database, Silver? ] asked AUDAL after understanding Silver's concern and confusion.
"Yes, that would be nice," said Silver, as he had nothing else to rely on anyway, believing AUDAL was his only option to at least understand his situation.
[ Confirmed / Suggested alternative / I detect no activation of Ark Noir wavelength, Silver / I suggest that we board the Ark Noir first before I explain it / Report: Energy capacity under 5% / I can explain it to you now if you wish, but I'm afraid we will be drifting in space when I finish my explanation / And as an organic creature, I have calculated that you would not like that experience ] suggested AUDAL after her calculation of the situation.
"Uh... is that humor? Well, okay, we board the Ark Noir and I'll try to think of a way, I guess," said Silver, grinning slightly after hearing AUDAL's suggestion and a bit of humor, which is rare for an AI.
[ Affirmative / Proceeding with original course / Course: Seraphim-Class Battleship, Codename: Ark Noir / Answering question / Negative / No, Silver, it is not a humor-based emotion of humans but a calculated remark, as I have calculated that drifting in space would not be something that gives a pleasant feeling for any organic matter ] AUDAL reported her course and explained her remark, which made Silver relax and chuckle a bit.
"Haha, sure, AUDAL, you don't need to explain that," Silver told her. Even Silver himself did not know why he talked to AUDAL as a friend and not as a machine, maybe because of his loneliness after losing his parents in the war, or seeing many of his friends killed by pirates and mercenaries alike when they were still on Ungrath. But one thing Silver knew was that he had begun to trust this AI as his partner.
After two minutes of flying toward the moon, AUDAL stopped for five seconds, which Silver did not know why. Before he could even ask, AUDAL's gentle woman's voice sounded once again in his head.
[ Report: Ark Noir wavelength present / Sending boarding message / ... / No response from Ark Noir / Launching sonar detection / ... / Confirmed: Ark Noir is inactive / Calculating path / Path found / Setting course: Arcana Facility 8 ]
After giving that report, The Fool Angel Frame moved close to Gorgath's surface. After a couple of seconds, Silver saw what looked like the exit of a missile silo gate.
The gate looked dusty, and some parts even seemed to be poorly maintained, many explosion marks were present, indicating that something had tried to blow the place up.
[ Sending entry request / ... / No response / Calculating solution / Solution found / Silver, I have detected the door gate will not open / It seems the maintenance bots have been neglecting the place / Would you like me to remove the gate out of existence to gain entry ... ] asked AUDAL, still in her gentle voice, which made Silver's brow twitch as she talked about blasting something away.
"Ugh... is there any other way? If the facility is abandoned or maybe declared inactive for a long time, the maintenance bots should also be deactivated, right? So can we find a way to, like, I don't know, slice through or squeeze through some gap that has been created? I would like to not create unnecessary explosions, as it would risk us getting found by the orbiting Seraphim Battleship from the Empire," said Silver after giving some thought and proceeding to give AUDAL a set of orders.
[ Affirmative / Calculating path based on pilot observation / No gap found / Calculating alternative / Found / Suggested to use weapon arsenal / Drawing the Reaper ]
As AUDAL said that line, Silver saw on his HUD a scythe being selected. Instinctively, he looked back at The Fool's winged mechanical structure and saw that it had twelve long mechanical feathers, each gap held in place by the Maternum particles. Silver then saw two feathers fly into The Fool's arms, combining to make a handle. The Fool drew the handle, creating a dark crimson blade on its edge.
The dark crimson blade sliced through the gate like butter, which surprised Silver. "Wha—what?! That's a plasma energy melee weapon! And for it to be in the wings? What kind of Angel Frame has a built-in plasma energy melee weapon?" said Silver in awe and confusion.
[ Correct / The Fool was built with the goal of "One who stands above all," the motto of the Pre-Unification era / So the Angel Frame was created so that it could handle both long and close-range battle and excel at both scenarios without the need of assistance from nearby allies ] explained AUDAL as she entered the long tunnel after breaching the gate. The scythe that The Fool used went back into its wings like it had never even existed.
"Wow..." reacted Silver as he saw the tunnel. The tunnel was reinforced using Mercury Alloy, shown in his HUD, the alloy almost as hard as tungsten. After going down for a couple of seconds, what Silver saw blew his mind: a structure built around a massive Seraphim-Class Battleship. The structure, which might be a hangar bay or the place where the battleship was being built, looked grand and majestic, mechanical arms holding the massive Seraphim-Class Battleship in place, and many long and massive wires connected to the ship. The massive ship, which looked completely built, was left alone right in the core of Ungrath's moon, hidden for centuries.
The ship that Silver saw with his eyes was around seven kilometers long and could hold around four thousand crew. From the same HUD, Silver saw that this Seraphim-Class Battleship was at least two kilometers longer than the known Seraphim-Class ships. Silver saw from AUDAL's HUD that it detected the ship using NSD (Nexa Singularity Drive), something Silver had never heard of. He knew that the fourteen Seraphim-Class Battleships used Maternum-Class OFD (Octa-Fusion Drive) reactors, and now, Silver had never heard or read anything about the so-called NSD reactor that the Ark Noir used.
[ Requesting permission to board the Ark Noir vessel / ... / No response / Detecting energy / Report: Ark Noir is active / Sending request to autonomous control / ... / Permission granted ]
Silver's thoughts were interrupted by AUDAL's report.
As AUDAL finished speaking, the nearest hangar door of the Ark Noir opened. AUDAL then landed The Fool there. Silver saw the inside of the Ark Noir and was instantly in awe, its power was active, as if it had never been deactivated or even stopped operating. With a quiet hum, AUDAL piloted The Fool to the nearby Angel Frame bay and connected it there. After The Fool successfully connected to the Angel Frame bay of the Ark Noir, many thoughts came into Silver's head, thinking about what was happening, whether he was safe now, and what he should do next.
But even before Silver could think further, AUDAL's voice cut into his mind.
[ Docking successful / Welcome to Ark Noir, Silver / Would you like me to establish connection to the Ark Noir and give you command over it ... ] asked AUDAL.
"What? You can do that?" asked Silver in disbelief.
[ Affirmative / It is possible for me to gain access, the Ark Noir was built with The Fool as its main Cataphract / Would you like me to initiate the Arcana Protocol ... ] asked AUDAL after giving Silver a brief explanation as to why the Ark Noir was here.
"What? No, before that, explain to me how this ship is tied to you, and what your stance on the Empire is. It is impossible that the Empire would leave a Seraphim-Class Battleship and an Arcana-Type Angel Frame here in Ungrath, where the Empire's influence is the lowest. It sounds like a cheat for any rebel or any force that wants to overthrow the Empire," said Silver, gathering his thoughts and speaking his suspicion.
[ Affirmative / Calculating answer using the database / Answering / The Angel Frame was not made by the Empire / It was a project begun and developed by humans, dating back to 2021 / The Fool finished its first creation in the year 2202 as the first Angel Frame-type Arcana model, giving it the 00 code, and three years later I was uploaded as the AI that inhibits The Fool / Later, around three years after The Fool's activation, the Arcana Union, which had the technology to create Arcana-Type Angel Frames, was wiped out / The Arcana Union fought back with all they could but eventually lost / Three of the original seventy-eight Arcana-Type Angel Frames were destroyed and damaged beyond repair, while the last five were never found, as the Arcana Union initiated the Shuffle Protocol, making the once-seventy-eight Angel Frames connected through one another as a team cut their own connection, their own AIs wiping their own memories, not giving the Empire a chance to study their technology / As known in your memory, the seventy-two Arcana-Type Angel Frames that the Empire has are the same Arcana that were created by the Arcana Union ]
[ The Fool and I did not initiate the Shuffle Protocol, as I do not have such a protocol in me / After what is recorded as the Arcana War by the remnants of the Arcana Union, they found that the Arcana Union had another project, which was the Super-Class Seraphim-Class Battleship / The last record showed that the battleship was powered by the only NSD Reactor Engine called the Arkheart, said to be humankind's one-of-a-kind reactor that uses the Nexa Element and fuses it with the Maternum Element / Its one-of-a-kind properties are the result of the fact that the Nexa Element is almost impossible to create, as the last record of it being found is from the remnant of an asteroid that, by some miracle, managed to contain its element in lattice form after the merging of two neutron stars / I will give you a full report about how the reactor works after this, Silver ] explained AUDAL.
"Thanks, but who is the Arcana Union force? I never heard of them," asked Silver, still curious about AUDAL's explanation.
[ It is a force that opposed the Empire's ideal, founded by Marcus Arcensius, who was a prince of the Empire around the year 2018 / Its goal was to unite humanity as the apex rulers of space, helping the exploration of space travel / Ungrath was the first planet that the Arcana Union, led by Marcus, helped discover and eventually became its first colony / The records also said that the Angel Frame-type Arcana was originally created with the hope of giving humanity a plan that failed miserably / Before the creation of the first Angel Frame-type Arcana, the Arcana Union helped the Empire create the first Angel Frame / At first, the Arcana Union only helped the Empire to create such an angel without weapons, its sole focus being as an autonomous machine used for farming and gathering resources across the vast expanse of space / But the Empire reverse-engineered it into a weapon around the year 2132 of the space calendar ] explained AUDAL as she showed a record of the plans and ideals from ancient times, before the Unification War even happened.