"Huh?" Milanor faced her back. "Sorry, what?"
"The Last Treasure," Naya reiterated.
He blankly stared at her face as he grasped what she said. "Um. Something about treasure? Isn't that an urban legend?"
"…You must've heard the rumors. Did it come from your experiences, as usual?"
"Hah? W-Wait a bit. Let me make this clear first. We're talking about the same thing here, right? That fairy tale about the lost Eden?" Milanor asked with apprehension.
"The exact same. The sleeper ship that was said to be the last one to leave the homeworld, more than a thousand years after the first one."
His astonished expression didn't change as he tried to recall what he knew about that story. The legend became a dream for treasure and artifact hunters across the galaxy.
Ark Eden. The famous but elusive First Founder ship that to this day had never been found.
"How much do you know about that story, Naya?" Milanor inquired. It was a story that greatly fascinated him when he was younger.
He remembered his parents were quite interested in the lost ship too, and they would often ask their surveyor friends about the current search progress.
"Not much different than what's popularly known," she replied. "All the information about the ship came from the several dozen passengers that left using escape pods and came into contact with the established civilizations."
"Ah, yes. They called themselves the Fallen Angels, didn't they? Something to do about the name of the ship."
"Mmm," she nodded. "'Eden' was one of the other names for heaven, and 'angels' was supposed to be its inhabitants or something?"
"Perhaps. I heard it was 'paradise' instead of heaven… Well, I only learned all those things from what my colleagues told me. They knew a lot about the Orion Cult, you see. Sometimes part of the hazard of the job."
Religions were very rare in this day and age… Some thousands of years ago a popular belief sprung up around the time when the red supergiant star Betelgeuse exploded in a supernova.
It caused a lot of commotion and doomsday conspiracy theories among the whole galactic populace, though it ended up as nothing more than just a strikingly bright but temporary feature in the night skies. The resulting nebulae were still plenty visible to this day, though.
The most well-known legacy of this celestial event was the previously said Orion cult. According to the Origin Database, the star Betelgeuse was part of the old constellation of Orion. That was where it got the name from, apparently.
Not like anyone today would be able to see the constellation itself in person, mind you.
"So what's this about treasure? The things inside that ship's cargo hold? The ship itself?" Milanor questioned. "Do you even know anything that isn't just plain rumors?"
"Yeah, I do," Naya confidently replied. Which he didn't expect. "I won't talk about it before we find the professor though."
"Huh? Why not? The professor got something to do with this?"
"Yeah," she succinctly nodded without elaborating anymore.
That seemed to contradict what she said not too long ago. "Didn't you just say that you have no idea what she's doing here?"
"I didn't lie, I really don't know what she'd intended to do here. But," she paused. "I do know why she left Avalon, to begin with."
…
'Well, I do expect you would know that. You left together with her.'
Naya turned to face him briefly before facing the window again. "That reason was also why I joined her."
"Huh."
Milanor probed her a few times about what she meant but didn't get any answers. Well, she said that the good professor had something to do with it, so he probably would learn about it sooner or later.
'It's just…'
Yesterday, right after they left Runanthor, what Miledi said to Milanor in the meeting room came back to mind. "Keep it to yourself," she advised him. But still…
"Hey, Naya…" he murmured. He wasn't sure whether he intended for her to hear him or not. "I don't know if you realize this but…"
She glanced at him as he trailed off, silent and waiting for what he was trying to say.
"…No, never mind. Yeah, I'll wait till we fi—"
"Master, sir. It seems we have reached the central port's area," Miledi interrupted him by calling out from the cockpit.
The scene outside had changed from the sullen and dusty urban sprawl into an area filled with heavy industrial buildings.
The air traffic here was even worse than earlier, with countless small flyers zigzagging with no apparent order. Milanor could see a relatively open block up ahead where many of those flyers went into.
Miledi skillfully brought the craft inside the port area, finding an available spot for them to land. When she turned off the engine, he could easily hear the loud bustle of this place's activities, even directly through the craft's sealed hull.
"How do we find this Karl guy? Just look at all these people here."
"Shouldn't you go pick that package first?" Naya asked.
"Eh, I figured we might as well ask this dude about it. Maybe he would know the place it's stored in."
They disembarked from the shuttlecraft and immediately Naya started coughing up and covering her nose in discomfort.
The place had an unhealthy level of pollutants in the air. Milanor considered himself a hardy fellow, but even he had to scrunch my face in this toxic environment.
"*groan* It's obvious what they said about low life expectancy… I could feel my lung getting contaminated each second just standing here."
"*cough* *cough* It was never this… *cough* bad in Runanthor…" Naya said between her gasps.
They were the only ones so obviously uncomfortable in sight, however. The workers running around the place seemed used to the condition.
He caught one of them that carried the least amount of items (and which Milanor figured the least burdened) and asked him in a loud voice.
"Hey! I'm looking for a guy named Karl! A ship captain! You know anything about him!?"
With a miffed expression, the man shrugged his hand which had gripped his shoulder.
"I'm hella busy here, just go to the receptionist if you wanna ask anything," he said in a gruff voice.
Milanor expected the reaction as much. The worker immediately left them to go wherever he intended to.
"What now?" Naya asked beside him. "The people don't look too accommodating."
"Well, I suppose," he exasperatedly sighed. "But you know, we don't have that much of an option on how to do this so…"
"Hmm?"
"Captain, I secured the shuttle so we can leave it here safely," Miledi came out of the craft and finally joined them on the ground.
"Right, you help me too, Miledi. Follow my lead," Milanor said to the robomaid and indicated toward a throng of people huddled together.
"Captain?"
"Hey, where are you—"
"Excuse me, people! I'm looking for a captain named Karl! Anybody knows the captain named Karl!? Hello, I'm looking for Captain Karl!!"
The shouts reverberated across the landing pads for a while, after which Miledi then joined in the shouting. Naya seemed bothered by the ruckus they were making, but this was the fastest and easiest way to find this dude.
Milanor was hoping she would help too, but it didn't look like that was gonna happen.
"Hey, you. You! Hey, listen to me!!" He thought he heard someone yelling back at him. "Mensch! This place is already loud enough without your verdammt loudspeakers chiming in!"
"Huh?" Milanor stopped his yelling and turned to the man who suddenly appeared.
He was a rather short middle-aged man with a prominent mustache, wearing the same sort of overall as the rest of the workers here, though a bit cleaner. "Can you idiots stop trying to turn this place into more of a blodën ear-grinder! What do you want?"
He could hear a faint Krulic accent in the man's speech. Now that Milanor thought about it, Qwattor was part of the Federation for a short time, shortly before the war with the androids.
That was nearly a thousand years ago though, and lots of its influences had faded from the planet. Considering the remoteness, he didn't expect he would have those Krulic words directed at him.
"Ah, sir, we're just visiting the city this morning, and we're looking for someone. Do you know of a ship captain called Karl?" Milanor tried to be direct, partly to save time.
The man narrowed his eyes at him right after he said that. Was there something wrong?
"…There're lots of Karls around here if you haven't realized. Don't you have anything more specific?" he asked.
"Well, I was told he was a pretty competent captain… Oh, yeah, his ship is called the Kyffhäuser," he told him.
Boss Hein had looked through his documents when Milanor probed him for more information before they left, and he found this name after a bit of searching.
"Krass. So you're talking about him after all… Haaah," the man sighed deeply and shook his head. What was this reaction? It didn't make sense.
"Uh, is something wrong? Do you know him after all? Can we meet him?"
"That's gonna be hard," he replied. "You all not from around here?" he took a discerning look at the three of them.
"No, we're from, uh… far away place. As I said, we just arrived here this morning."
"Hah. Go figures," the man exclaimed while putting one hand on his hip and the other one twirling his mustache. "What do you want with herr Karl?"
"Well, we wanted to ask him about something. I mean, someone. We're looking for a missing, uh… friend, you see. And we suspect that Captain Karl might know something about this," Milanor honestly explained.
"I see… When was this friend of yours met him?"
"Oh, sometimes around six years ago…"
The mustache man turned to stare at his face with an incredulous expression. "Yeah, it was quite a while ago, I know. But still…"
"No, that makes sense," he cut him off. "Why don't you follow me for a bit? I'll explain what I know somewhere else."
"Huh? Is that okay? We're not bothering you?"
"That's fine. I'm one of the inspectors for the port, but I'm currently on my break. I was just told some weird people were making a commotion on the pads and was asked to do something about them, that's all."
"A-Ahaha… Sorry about that."