x
There's a crack in my visor.
All I see is the shimmer of the stars above, turning my head ever so slightly to the right.
I realised I was sliding down a steep slope.
Then the world goes black, except for a giant red orb. I stare at the glowing red orb, pulsating in a void of darkness.
Sound drains around me, and I spoke nothingness.
How?
'Am I a ghost?' I think to myself, watching the pulsating crimson shift into Artemis, the traveller who I freed long ago.
'You're a Traveller Anomaly.' It's ingrained in my head, yet no words are said. Only a scorching red vision of ancient lettering appears in my mind. I float, as the world around me reveals itself once more.
Then I see it. My lifeless, limp corpse at the bottom of the slope and the retreat from the normally abiding corrupted sentinels.
I died. And I let out a singular, wild wail.
'Sentinels,' Artemis cuts more words into my mind. 'but you can rebuild from the ashes, like you always do, Traveller.'
'Wait, what?' And a vision fills my eyes of a lone Traveller Anomaly.
They are clutching their side as they exit a harmonic camp on a corrupted world, sentinels chasing them relentlessly. They run as far as they possibly can, further and further away until they keel over, collapsing to the floor.
The sentinels catch up and finish the poor Traveller off as they crawl until they could no longer.
But then comes something else. The same traveller, exiting a corrupted ship. But then it hit me again.
My corrupted ship.
The final vision shows how the ship finally crashed, and how everything linked together. The ship was crashed into the mountainside where I found it before my death, in the corrupted world that caused all of this.
It left me with only one conclusion. 'Was that me?'
'Partially. It wasn't you, but it was.'
I am shown yet another memory, but its of me this time. I hear my own thoughts, and they are of confusion.
'I feel as if I've been here before, but at least this ship responds to my touch. Or at least that of my exosuit.'
And the memory ends.
I hear a voice, but it's mine.
'Go, Traveller. Find yourself amongst the stars.'
I pull myself to my feet.
I notice that I am running out of hazard protection, so my first call of order will be to gather sodium.
Then I realise that my scanner was damaged. I start mining for ferrite dust to quickly repair it, and I succeed after mining five or so rocks.
I find my first lifeform amongst them, almost hitting the dumb beast with my mining laser. "That was close!"
They quickly scurry off, leaving me to my task. My radiation protection drops to less than 10% as I hurry up a mountain, finding two plants of sodium and quickly refilling.
But it only restored 20% of my capacity, so I would have to find more.
I have a vague memory of a spaceship, but I will need an analysis visor to find it; something that I need to survive this radioactive wasteland.
I explored further outwards from where I started, finding my next sodium plant and bringing my radiation protection even higher. I knew I would need more to survive however.
Before I get any further though, I am greeted by the sound and sight of a marker. An automated distress signal.
It was about 500 units away, so I decided to search for some more sodium before I embarked on the journey.
This brought me further out another 200 units and about a minute and a half of extra walking as a result. I had gathered enough sodium though to reach out to the automated distress signal, which was next on my agenda.
And yet again, I got distracted. This time by some form of cargo drop.
I open up the containers. The yellow one, first to be opened, gives me nothing. When I move around to the small red ones however, I am gifted condensed carbon.
I then fixed the damaged green container and opened it up, again gifted by nothing. So I march up another hill, grab sodium again and I'm on my way with full hazard protection.
On the way over, I was starting to run out of life support, which is powered by oxygen. I did not find any oxygen on my expedition, but I did mine a bit more and gathered more carbon and ferrite dust; these are two resources I was probably going to need.
I also ended up mining di-hydrogen crystals when I couldn't find any more oxygen, knowing that 50 di-hydrogen crafted into a jelly and 20 carbon could create a life support gel. This would restock my life support fully.
However, I did not gather enough di-hydrogen to support this. I did not have enough carbon either, so it was lucky when I finally found a singular oxygen plant only a 150 units away from the distress beacon.
But now I had no sodium, and my radiation protection was at 25%.
But I was in luck; I saw a spacecraft about 10 units away from the distress beacon, and I ran for it...
255Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0VcYlhDsUI
