Chapter 238: Not Suitable for Survival
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
If a civilization wanted to keep developing for a long time, it was a necessary path to secede from its own mother planet. The resources of a planet were limited, and it was also a great security hazard to gather all civilized members on a single planet. Therefore, every intelligent race with normal thinking ability must step into space after completing the technology accumulation of the mother planet phase--or some other realms. In short, they must leave their cradle.
However, the Aerym elves face a desperate dilemma: from their cradle to the nearest recharge point, there was a distance that could deter any primary space civilization. It was impossible for them to arrive at another planet with their initial space technology. They could not find any springboard and resource areas in their own stellar systems like other civilizations which allowed them to slowly study various space technologies with sufficient material and energy support. They could not find a neighbor station that they could reach in their lifetime as well.
For a normal civilization to step into space, unless they were smart enough to develop the deep space navigation technology and hyperdrive directly on the mother planet without making a mistake in 100%, or else, they would need to look for a springboard within their primitive galaxy, and carry out a series of studies on another planet of proper distance where they took it as their foothold. The initial technological build-up of the hyperdrive is accompanied by great danger, and many of the experimental facilities that contained powerful forces could not be built directly on the mother planet. Moreover, the most primitive hyperdrive fuel was often mined only in gas giant planets that were unfit for life. Even without these two conditions, there should be at least another sun around the proto-stellar system. And the distance could not be too far, which at least ensured that the pioneers could arrive within a generation.
However, the elves of Aerym had nothing. They had just rushed out of the circle of gravity to face an insurmountable chasm. Unless they have the means to develop the deep space navigational facilities directly in the event of skipping various transition technologies, they would be trapped in the barren land of tens of millions of light-years.
It was not impossible to create a deep space starship directly in the case of a single mother planet. But they needed not just a gift but also a great good luck. And the elves of Aerym had no such good luck. They failed to find the right path and depleted all the non-renewable resources on the planet. And then, they could only slowly die in the barren land of tens of millions of light-years.
The planet began to dry up, the astral resources were extracted, and even the planet itself was reshaped into an energy-efficient space floating island, and then the space floating island was slowly reorganized into other forms. The elves trapped in the cradle could only use their own limited resources to constantly transform to continue their civilization carefully as far as possible. Their home was unrecognizable, more and more unbearable. The elves of Aerym who once thought they were at the pinnacle of civilization were weaker every day. In the end, they could only struggle to survive in a space floating island that had been rebuilt countless times and could barely recognize its original form with a lone sun, and the population has begun to slump under brutal resource constraints.
"When I was born, Aerym had reached the tipping point," said Hilda quietly, "and no matter how much we cherish our homes, resources are being consumed constantly. There is no sustainable resource circulation system in a solitary planet environment. In the last hundreds of years we have had to find ways to extract energy and material from the sun, so we built a lot of corona stations. It’s a very dangerous facility, expensive and unstable, and every corona station has to pay a huge human and material price. Sometimes it takes a lot of excellent magic-expert life, and that’s just a stopgap. "
Hao Ren looked curiously at Hilda and asked, "So you decided to make a teleportation portal when you found out that you couldn’t build a deep space starship?"
"Yes, this is the grand plan my husband made when he was still alive. Unfortunately, until he died in a corona station explosion accident, we were not able to create a truly stable super teleportation portal that could lead to the depths of the space," Hilda sighed and continued, "and after his death, I spent 30 years building a huge space-time accelerator with national power. That thing almost ran out of all the energy that the three corona stations had accumulated over 100 years. However, when it was launched for the first time, a huge accident happened, and I was at the observation tower with the ministers to witness the launching ceremony... And then everything exploded. I don’t know what the consequences would be, so now I have to go back as soon as possible. My people must have been in a mess. They need me to be there with them."
Vivian could feel the pain and secretly glanced at Hilda and said, "I don’t know why I can feel those elves of Aerym…"
Lily understood and nodded and said, "Because all of you are very poor."
Everybody stared at the ignorant husky: Is this the right time to say such a thing in this kind of serious occasion?
Y’zaks smiled and looked around and said, "Now you guys know what the words I said that to those demon hunters mean? Resources are valuable and cannot withstand internal depletion. When I was on the immigration boat, I heard an old man said that every civilization has a ‘fault-tolerant value’ in the development process. This fault-tolerant value is determined by factors such as their home resource reserves, their ability to develop their own races and their homeland environment. The higher the resource reserves, the better the environment around the homeland and the stronger the development ability, the higher the fault-tolerant value will be, and vice versa. If a civilization wants to develop, it must be moved to another area before its resources are depleted. For this, they learn to protect the environment to reduce wastage, plan routes to prevent them from going astray, and, most importantly, try to avoid waste by avoiding internal depletion. The resources of the homeland and the surrounding environment are fixed, and the only thing the people can decide is only themselves. Many races are born in fertile places where the planet itself is rich in resources and is surrounded by abundant resources and springboard. So they waste their resources wantonly, use them in the civil war, and finally wake up to realize that they can’t even build the last ship to the neighbor planet. However, some races are born in desolate and barren places, they must carefully calculate every single step, and they don’t know whether they will be able to leave the cradle alive. There is a lot of injustice in the world, and nothing is more unfair than this kind of ‘racial predestination’. Honestly, I think the people on Earth are a little bit like prodigal sons squandering the family fortune. Your solar system has various springboards like Mars and the moon, there are giant resource stations such as Saturn and Jupiter, every planet around the Earth is filled with fuel and outer casings of spaceships, and the planets are close enough to arrive even with the spaceship using the most primitive chemical fuel. But humans are too busy throwing more bombs at your own people. This is stupid, as stupid as the idiots in my hometown. Look at those elves of Aerym, their fault tolerance value is even negative..."
Hao Ren looked at Y’zaks with astonishment. He rarely saw the great demon to speak so many words. The seemingly vicious tall man was usually very polite and amiable, and he never talked much. Hao Ren was vaguely aware of one thing: the story of Hilda touched a sensitive point in the heart of the great demon, which perhaps related to his past.
After Y’zaks found the people around him looked a bit weird, he waved his hand and apologized, "I was too serious, hope you guys don’t mind."
Vivian’s lips slightly curled up and said, "No... I thought you said it very well, so well that it shouldn’t come from a demon’s mouth."
Y’zaks smiled awkwardly, spread out his hands and said, "You are not the first to say so."
"I thought a lot after I came to the Otherworld," Hilda said after kept silent for a long time, "for the first time that I confirmed the existence of other races and even other worlds and confirmed the many speculations of our scholars. During the two days on Earth, I happened to see the science program on Earth and got to know what your stellar system is, and how far the Earth is from the nearest planet. It’s incredible. We were curious about whether our surroundings were normal, but we couldn’t find a reference, so we are not sure if it’s because the elves of Aerym are too stupid or too unfortunate to end up this way. Now I’m relieved. Maybe I shouldn’t blame the scholars."
"Other than the exceptions, only a few of the intelligent races are really stupid," the data terminal suddenly said, "As long as there is an initiative, they should be praised. For the others, even if they’re misguided and eventually trapped in the mother planet, they should not be blamed, because entering the space is indeed a very difficult task, and many times they have to rely on luck. Sometimes a race has tried their best but still can’t find a way out of gravity, not that they didn’t work hard enough or not smart enough. They are simply not lucky enough."
A slight hum came from somewhere in the spaceship.
The virtual images around the bridge became brighter again. A dazzling sun appeared at the corner of the image.
"We’ve reached Aerym," the Mobile Data Terminal said.