"Navigation completed."
Nolan's voice remembered everyone that they have arrived at their destination. Hao Ren took the chance to look away from the mind-numbing pile of data towards the display of the visuals outside. He only saw a bright nebula that the ship had arrived upon, but yet there was something clearly wrong with the nebula.
It was a bright purple gaseous structure, and based on the initial scans it was about twelve light years wide as it spread out in a radial form across the nebula, and the core was even brighter by the order of magnitudes. Based on its shape, it seemed like this was a nebula that remained after being torn off, and the bright light was the primal materials that could not form a planet. Within the nebula's darker parts a few bright spots were visible as the smaller stars were glowing bright.
"It looks a bit weird..." Lily said as she lay before the holographic display wagging her tail. "Like it got distorted by a funhouse mirror?"
Hao Ren nodded. "Probably by gravitational interference. The sunken part probably has a blackhole or something."
They were talking about the weird shape of the nebula: It was not in a proper shape and one side of the nebula was clearly 'sinking' inwards. Everything, light included was slanted towards the sinkhole, almost akin to a canvas being slowly torn apart, or the big hole was formed in the middle of the universe and the nebula was sinking through the hole into another universe. If one were to look in detail, the entire nebula was indeed affected by this 'skewing point', and an infinitely powerful gravitational energy was slowly and surely drawing it in.
On the end of the nebula closest towards the 'skewing point', there were clear signs of the nebula being torn apart. Everything within that zone had disappeared, leaving only a clear demarcation line, like formless nebula was sliced apart by an invisible blade. Well, it could also be somes ort of optical phenomenon obscuring what was really within the zone.
"Amazing..." Lily mumbled to herself. She might act like a dumb husky most of the time, she was however the most educated amongst the team. The scene before here was no mere entertainment. "The skewing of the starlight can be attributed to the blackhole, but what of that barren area?"
"No, even that reasoning does not hold water." Hao Ren looked at the data on the screen before frowning. "There's no blackhole there."
"No blackhole?" Lily's ears shuddered. "Then why did the light skew?"
"Nothing to do with gravity, period." The MDT spoke before Hao Ren could even say a word as it displayed a new holographic screen. On it was the purple nebula's dimensional structure. It was crumpled like a cloth being pulled. "The whole dimension is skewed and the starlight skewing is only to our eyes. It is still a straight line in its own dimension. This is a very unusual place. There's no powerful gravitational force affecting it, but yet the dimension's rhythm had undergone changes."
Y'zaks gruff voice rang. "Must've been the explosion from the assassination attempt against the Goddess and it destroyed the dimension's structural integrity."
Hao Ren set for the Petrachelys to travel at hyperspeed towards the skewing point of the nebula as he raised a comm to the hangar - Muru was waiting there. "Muru, I'll be transferring the images to you. You reckon this is the Solenne Gateway?"
Hao Ren transferred the image of the skewed nebula to the guardian, and the latter took a few seconds before responding, surprise was apparent in his voice. "This... it does look like part of the star systems that the Solenne Gateway is located, but how did it become like that?"
"No idea. There's something off there, and the dimension itself is distorted and it is pushing against the universe around it." Hao Ren explained. "We are now heading into the epicenter of the skewing, you know what sort of celestial body that is able to create such a signal?"
Muru suppressed the unease within him as he scanned through his memory for any celestial bodies that were familiar to him within the grossly distorted nebula. "The skewing point... a little to the side, do you see the part that looked like it was cut apart? There is a solitary light there, a star, there should be a rocky planet around there, that star is the main fortress of the Solenne Gateway. Its name is the very gateway it is protecting. The signal is from there."
Hao Ren nodded and had Nolan to accelerate towards the planet. He then deployed the data network of the exploration probes and pulled out the surveillance records from a few days back of one of the probes.
A few days ago, one of the exploration probe passed by the area, and the images captured was what Hao Ren was seeing now. But the recordings only showed a desolate area and only the faint light of stars a million light years dotted the barren zone.
Yet, when Hao Ren looked up, what he saw was a magnificent, tilting and mysterious nebula.
The Solenne Gateway just popped out of nowhere, without warning in the dimension. The question was, why did it appear?
Nolan swiftly brought the ship close towards the skewing point and they were soon at the distance where the outer surveillance cameras could no longer see the complete body of the nebula. Hao Ren only saw the frigate approaching a star that was getting brighter by the passing moment. Within the star's perimeter was a very visible 'scar', and that scar seemed to have 'pierced' into the universe (visually at least) as it expanded on both sides of the star.
The scar was the same demarcation line that they saw when they were monitoring the nebula, the place that looked it got slashed up with a sword. It was not radiant by is own and had no obvious coloration to it. But as nebula and the galactical background did not mesh, and that the light source from other places was completely blocked by the scar, leaving the line a very obvious one.
"Seems like this Solenne Gateway is something that was chopped out of a bigger block." Lily pointed towards the scar around the star. "And we are flying directly towards it!"
Nolan's holographic projection suddenly popped up as she forked her arms on her waist, staring sternly at Lily. "Stop that scary talk. The one that is flying towards it is me, I have first-person view for crying out loud!"
Hao Ren subconsciously looked at Nolan, and thought that the longer that she became a ship, this cold and distant ' mercenary lass' was more and more humanlike. But this change probably had nothing to do with her being a spaceship now. The main reason was that Nolan had finally known the 'truth' and she now did not need to worry that things would disappear like a dream and she no longer need to worry about waking up to a world where everyone was a stranger again. She was now living in a bona fide world, a real world and the personality that is on display now is probably her original personality.
As Hao Ren's thoughts circled around such immaterial matters, Nolan's expression suddenly changed as the Petrachelys suddenly deaccelarated and the mainframe sent out a warning. "Space-time anomaly detected, Space-time anomaly detected..."
Y'lisabet immediately leaped from her seat. "What's going on?"
"There's a space-time distortion ahead of us." Nolan's projection was fading as she shifted more processing power to the mainframe. "...There is a problem with the timeflow at the skewing point."
Y'lisabet rubbed her dainty horn in confusion. "Timeflow?"
Seems like the little demon had not studied that sort of super-advanced module yet.
The holographic display on the control bridge displayed the celestial map of the area, and the planet named Solenne was right in the middle. It was marked as bright red, and around Solenne was rings upon rings of reddish halo that faded as it went. This was a whirlpool of considerable strength, and Solenne was in the eye of the storm.
"Seems like both time and space was distorted, and Solenne is at the epicenter of it." Nolan pointed towards Solenne as she gave a rapidfire explanation. "From here on, time flows slower the closer it is to Solenne."
The bridge fell silent and everyone looked at each other.
They knew this place was off, but they never thought the thing that was really off was the timeflow. This was not something they had encountered before.
"This slowdown effect is also present near a blackhole, or when some form of hyper lightspeed travel was used without first stabilizing the space-time continuum." Nolan went on. She probably was not originally equipped with such knowledge, but now that she had access to the data vault, she was a literal walking encyclopedia. "As there is no blackhole, or hyper lightspeed activities in the area, the main reason for the change in timeflow is probably a dimensional distortion... or something even more sinister than that, like the Goddess-slaying War that blew the entire law of the universe in the place to smithereens."