near the planet Daniel was stranded on by the puddle, an enormous creature with red scales and black claws was peacefully sleeping in space when suddenly it felt a disturbance in its territory
an enormous blood-red eye as big as a continent opened, looking at a wormhole that had opened out of nowhere in one of its galaxies, before a strange black-haired kid walked out of it, landing on one of the few planets able to sustain life
as it was about to go apprehend the intruder, it used its senses to scan the kid, and it couldn't find anything, no cultivation, no spiritual energy, just some low-level technology, a spacesuit, and what looked like surveillance drones, he shouldn't have been able to survive the passage through a wormhole
but the creature still froze, the kid looked like that but there could be only one explanation for the tenth stage energy signature hidden in his body
the creature said to itself in a rough voice that seemed to come from someone who hadn't spoken in thousands of years "it's a wolf dressed as a sheep, he has to be powerful to survive a trip through a wormhole, probably trying to bait me out, but it won't work, if I stay here it doesn't matter how powerful you are, I'm invincible here" out loud, clearly lacking someone who listens
the creature continued to keep an eye on Daniel and sometime later said "what is he doing, why go incognito to buy worms?"
and an hour later the creature said "so now his building robots, those weak things can't even look in my direction, he's trying to make me lower my guard" still suspecting Daniel's action
back at the squatter lab, Daniel was elaborating on his idea, the new project Tickles network, which consisted in using the update feature from before when he used its ability to exchange messages through extremely long distances, there was only one problem, he had no idea were to start the connection was too weak, he could follow it no problem but send data through it seemed impossible at the moment
it was just in that nanosecond in which the data about the power generation machine was being transferred that the connection was strong enough, to find a way Daniel had to wait till the next time Tickles could use the ability, and maybe use something more advanced that would create a bigger datastream
in the meantime he thought about another project he could work on to pass the time, project jellydroid named so in honor of professor jellybot, which consisted of an automated drone made in a jellyfish shape, that filtered the water to catch the toxic chemical elements, that would stay in the umbrella, and would be brought to another location to be disposed of
the problems were not insurmountable like before but they were many, the main ones were 3
the first was energy, throwing batteries in the ocean didn't seem like a good idea
the second was the filtering system, it's not that easy, to remove something dissolved in the water, without catching good things like plankton, and other microscopic life, necessary for the sea to be healthy
and the third was, how to dispose of the toxic sludge they would bring back, it's not like he can put it in a barrel and forget about it if he wants to solve the problem
there were also other secondary problems, like what if it gets eaten by a fish, or if the umbrella starts to leak toxic sludge, but before worrying about these he had to solve the other 3
Daniel didn't need to make everything "clean", the objective, was to remove enough toxicity for the planet to become able to fight back with its natural abilities, if Daniel's system did 30% of the work, the planet will be able to heal itself, and since the sea was 60% of Retak, he didn't need to worry about the land pollution
the Retakian population, would also have a slight chance to survive, but Daniel didn't care about it, they steered themselves toward destruction, so if they die, nature will take its course, and another dominant species will rule this planet
but Daniel liked fishes and was curious if he could make something like that, so he decided to try and save them on a whim, to start he needed samples, of the water and the mutated fishes, so he could figure out how to go about filtering the water, and check the fishes health condition
so the first thing Daniel had the robot and tickles do, was craft giant live wells, to keep the various type of fish separated and contain seawater, this will be especially easy since the beach was near, so he will be able to fish the samples and put them in the wells before they died, then free them again later
tickles and the maru's worked the entire night, and the next day Daniel finally went fishing, half of tickles was continuing the construction, while 1 M.A.R.U v2 followed Daniel to transport back the fish, and the other went to set up the pump to bring seawater to the live wells
happily, Daniel rigged his fishing rod up, and threw the line in, he obviously didn't expect to catch enough fish for the study like this, but since only a few live wells were ready, there was no need to rush
soon Daniel was lucky and caught a fish who was basically a long, yellow flounder, and he put it in the box the maru was hauling and while the maru went back he threw the line back in the water
suddenly a woman with red hair and red eyes started walking towards him, and after she was near enough said "it's better not to eat those fish, the sea it's dirty"
Daniel said "I'm not eating them, I'm studying, trying to find a solution"
the woman was confused and asked "why?"
Daniel answered "because the fishes did nothing wrong"
the woman laughed and said "that applies to every animal besides humans on this planet"
Daniel looked at her and smiling said "but I like fishing, so I want to save the fish"
the woman eye's flashed, she looked at Daniel and while releasing a suffocating and extremely powerful aura she said "pleased to meet you, I don't have a name, but most people just call me empress chaos" like that should mean something to him
but Daniel smiled and said "nice to meet you sister chaos, I'm Daniel"
the woman was shocked but suddenly started laughing, and thought "how much time passed since I spoke like this to a person, without them begging for mercy or showing their teeth"
while they were talking every living being on retak had a feeling of uneasiness, the people of Treklam were evacuating their homes, trying to flee away, they didn't even know why they just felt that they had to run away while they could
Daniel could feel a strange aura coming from the woman, and even before she got close he understood that she wasn't from retak, but she wasn't behaving violently, so he just thought of her as a curious explorer or something like that
sister chaos finished laughing and said "how do you want to do it?"
Daniel was surprised by the question, usually, at home, the family wasn't really interested in hearing Daniel talk about science, so he took the chance and said "I'm starting by collecting samples, then I will study a filtering process . . ." he explained project jellydroid to sister chaos who listened attentively
after he finished sister chaos was shocked, she intended that she came out here in the open ready to fight, but the intruder talked to her like they were old friends, she was scared for a moment no one ever had this much audacity, even while feeling her aura he was smiling and talking happily about something unrelated
sister chaos decided to go with the flow, and while she was studying him, said "isn't it better to create a genetically engineered jellyfish, that feeds on the toxic compound and digests it, you will avoid the hassle of introducing batteries in the sea, and even if a fish eat a jellyfish it's biological, if it has already digested the toxic elements, it will just fill its stomach"
Daniel made a sad frown, and said "I have no knowledge about genetic engineering, the few I put together studying my grandma's books and studying items I found are hacking, robotics, a little about starships and chemistry, but most of it is engineering, telecommunication, and satellites, I also studied a lot of surveillance equipment"
sister chaos laughed and said "you are in the right place, I spent most of my life studying genetics, I can help you with this" at this point the lonely creature lost itself in the conversation, and was just talking with Daniel
Daniel looked at her and with sparkling eyes said "really?" he was really starting to like her
sister chaos nodded and said "sure I have nothing to do while I wait for the results again, I'll just send it to you and help" she was happy to have met a person who doesn't run away or try to attack after meeting her, and without reflecting about it, she sent an inheritance to Daniel directly
inheritance, it's a technique that can be used by cultivators from the eighth stage up, it's basically a transfer of everything the cultivator knows about a specific subject to another person, it is usually used to share cultivation experience, but sister chaos was using it to dump everything she knew about genetics, with 80% of it being about genetic engineering since she was specialized in that field for some personal reasons
the problem is, that if this technique is used on a normal person, it will cause him or her to have an explosive hemorrhage in the brain, especially when someone sends thousands of years' worth of memories to someone who is young
since sister chaos had been studying this, since before Vincent was born, Daniel for the first time in his life was mentally overloaded, thankfully his strange body and tickles worked in tandem to protect him, but from sister chaos's point of view, he didn't even flinch, even if inside Daniel was stunned, and was struggling to put everything together
sister chaos waited patiently after all the inheritance technique usually makes people faint, for her the fact that Daniel didn't even flinch and seemed to just be reflecting on the new information, was proof that he was a wolf dressed as a sheep, but he didn't display any bad intention, so she was enjoying the rare companionship, and just thought he was one of the old monsters who liked to behave like a normal person to hide is prowess
after a couple of hours Daniel managed to at least sort through it, he closed the pieces of information in an imaginary book in his mind, they were too much, and it will take a very long time to assimilate them, but he could still look at the index and try to use a little part of it, after experimenting a little, he was sure that it would be easy, to create a jellyfish who eats dioxins, furans, mercury and every other bad thing these people released in the environment
sister chaos knowledge was one big cheat code, but sadly some things are simply too complicated, he was thinking about himself, but apparently, he won't be able to use this knowledge to grow older, in what she gave to him there were some case's like his own, but she found no solutions
but he could still do a lot of cool things, he could customize fishes, he could make a rice carp gigantic, or a sapphire eel glow in the dark, this knowledge could also be used to make already terrifying creatures even more terrifying, but Daniel wasn't interested in that and was instead interested in making them more delicious, he couldn't wait to start experimenting on the fishes