Again, Adam was faced with another threat that could potentially drag this part of the Universe into chaos. He would have been drowned in the horrors of an alien war without even understanding what had happened.
At this point, Adam's expression was frighteningly cold. His core was flaring with intense fury at this cruel joke.
Should he be grateful to the humans for allowing him to experience countless apocalypses that allowed him to awaken and prepare for possible new apocalypses? Or should he curse them for even thinking of such possibilities and now being slapped in the face with it?
He wanted to calm down. He knew that humans were not entirely at fault. In fact, they definitely were not the only ones who thought of the possibility of apocalypses. Maybe there was not even a need for anyone to think about it at all and it would just happen regardless. The one in front of him certainly could have been the end of him long before he even awakened his consciousness.
Adam was starting to understand just how truly dangerous his situation was. It was as though he was cursed to see all the gruesome fates that he would meet, teasing him just to see him squirm before finally finishing him off when the novelty and amusement faded away.
It was a humiliating feeling. He felt helpless and powerless. But as he imagined what would happen to him if those invaders from the other side of this breach decided to come out and wreak havoc in the Universe, his core began to calm down. He felt a wave of cold wash over him, waking him up from his dreadful reverie. He turned around and hurriedly looked for two things in this large ship.
[The Universe wishes to reward you for your contribution. Name your desire.]
"I want knowledge of all forms of language in this Universe, both written and spoken. And I want technical knowledge or intuition in using all forms of technology. Either will do."
Adam replied quickly with barely a second of thought. That was because he had already recognised one of his greatest weaknesses at the moment. Besides human language and technology, he really had no knowledge of anything else.
He had seen some documents and computers in the mothership, but he could not read or use them. More importantly, one of his goals before he leaves is to find a working spaceship that he could use for travel.
He had seen the bottom of the mothership having many hangars for the battleships to dock into. If he were to find one working ship, he would not have to waste such a long time for interstellar travels.
[The Universe has acknowledged your desires. You will now be granted the corresponding knowledge through the Universal System.]
Perhaps because he had already made two contributions in this short time or perhaps it was just that his latest contribution had much more value that the Universe decided to give him both of the things he asked for.
As Adam looked at a sign up ahead, the system translated for him in a very intuitive manner that it felt like he always knew what those alien scripts said. The sign read 'Flux Lift', and before he could even wonder what the hell a Flux Lift was, the information had already streamed into him.
The Flux Lift was basically a glorified elevator that uses artificial gravity fluxes to allow a person to ascend or descend.
Adam naturally took the opportunity to speed up his exploration. He did not want to stay in this place for too long. The Invasive Breach may be dormant and was mending, but it was obvious that the invaders planned something for it if they had bothered to even setup that invisible semipermeable barrier outside.
So as he stepped into the still working flux lift, he navigated his way downward, following the directions on the wall that indicated which facilities could be found on a given floor. He quickly found the two facilities he was looking for. One was the hangar that was at the bottommost floor. The other was the Reactor Core at the very heart of the mothership.
Indeed, Adam wanted to see if he could somehow devour the ship's core. After that, he would devour a bit of the ships in the hangar to enhance his body. He had not devoured the mothership simply because he would need to destroy it to devour it.
This huge thing was the size of Jupiter. He did not want to waste time on it. Furthermore, when he learned of the breach, he no longer dared to disrupt its environment lest it might open up again. So he would settle for the ships in the hangar which are likely also made of the best materials that the Corpus could get their hands on.
Adam soon arrived at the central floor, rushing forward following the signs until he reached the Reactor Core. It was quite huge, more than half the size of an actual world core. It was a giant metallic ball that contained what seemed like plasma within it.
Adam did not bother trying to comprehend the complexities of the knowledge the system was giving him regarding this thing, and only took note of what was pertinent to him.
Long story short, it would definitely be possible for him to devour this Reactor as is, but it would not give him as much power as he was hoping for. That was because it had automatically set itself into power saving mode when no one had been actively using its power for over several centuries or even millennia straight.
Shifting it back up to maximum operational capacity was easy. He only had to go to the Control Room on the same floor and reactivate the Reactor. The problem was that once activated, this Reactor Core would likely be much more powerful than Earth's core with an estimate of about ten times.
One might think this was a good thing, but it was not.
If you blow too much air into a balloon, it would pop. The same thing would happen to Adam and Earth. He could not just gorge on all the cores he could find. He would need a good balance by strengthening his body as well. And although he could do that by devouring the ships in the hangar and even other facilities of the mothership far from the breach, he decided to do something different.
"This would be my first present to you, Evelyn. I hope you like it."