LH-01's Memories

Beneath the distant, dim starlight, the ancient god, towering like a star-shaped mountain range, emitted deep, overlapping tremors. Its voice was enough to drive even the strongest-willed human in the world insane, enough to shatter the rules and order of the Real World—yet when that voice reached Duncan's ears, all he felt was... weakness and exhaustion.

It was the erosion of ten thousand years and the crushing burden of an entire world.

Duncan had prepared many questions before coming here, but after hearing the voice from that dark mountain range, the first thing he asked was about Alice. "So that 'tentacle' in the Frost Deep Sea was indeed something you deliberately released? LH-03... Navigator Three, what exactly was going on? Why did you send Navigator Three to the Real World in the form of 'Alice'?"

The star-shaped mountain range remained silent in the darkness. After a long while, the deep tremor sounded again. "Because it was the only way to keep LH-03 operating... My core program is descending into chaos. I can no longer sustain the sandbox environment used to maintain LH-03."

Under the captain's protection, Shirley and A'gou retained their sanity. Yet as they listened to the conversation between the captain and the Abyssal Lord, they could not help doubting their own minds: they recognized every word, but could not understand a single sentence—what was a core program? What was a sandbox?

But the captain clearly understood what he was discussing with that terrifying ancient god.

After only a few seconds of thought, Duncan connected numerous clues and guessed what the Abyssal Lord—or rather, Navigator One—meant.

"You mean... after the New Hope broke apart, LH-03 had been operating inside you all this time?"

A reply came from within the mountain range. "It seems you already know quite a lot."