Bloodline Connection (First Update)

Zero was certain he could survive in this place, because it was only a library.

He clenched his frost-stiffened hands. The thermal imaging from his armor's built-in body-temperature monitor showed his limbs in blue, while the outside of his armor was covered in even thicker frost. To preserve the ancient books, the library's air was kept dry and cold year-round. After being separated from his power pack, most temperature-control systems had stopped functioning. Only a few emergency systems were barely operating on small emergency battery packs and motion generators, resisting the loss of body heat. He had to endure it. He was posing as an alien merchant, and weapons had to be removed before entering this library of the Shi'ar Empire. This was one of Zero's required courses—learning about and understanding alien cultures, understanding how other races in the galaxy functioned and survived, especially the alien empires of the cosmos. His monarch believed Zero could draw wisdom from the developmental histories of those races.

These humanoid beings, evolved from some sort of oviparous birdlike creature, had limbs similar to those of humans. This made Zero firmly believe his monarch's claim that humanity was the most perfect race in the universe, the most perfect product of Celestial genetic engineering. The Shi'ar Empire was a highly stratified militarized race. Zero could easily distinguish its two social classes by the crests atop Shi'ar heads. One had a triangular pointed crown, while the other had a scattered flat crown. Much like the ancient Egyptian nobility's use of tools to control the cranial development of their descendants, this indicated a social class that did not need to labor using objects balanced on their heads. It suggested that Shi'ar had once commonly used their heads to help carry objects.

The owner of this library was a