Vegis would slowly accumulate mana inside the bird that Jess has named Hamon everyday but only for 10 minutes a day. The massive spike in mana that occurred when he first sent the message forced a massive search in the area and questioning to happen. Thankfully, this area was already massively saturated in mana similar to his so it was considered an anomaly in the area instead of an attack. It took a week for Hamon to be filled with enough mana to create another message for Jess. Vegis planned out his message beforehand this time to make it much easier to write. What popped out of the bird's mouth was, “Hi Jess, it is me again. Could you tell Mac and the others that Mitra, the kid, and I are fine? We didn’t mean to worry you guys, it was a kinda spontaneous thing that was put on us. Also, could you keep the bird safe? Might need it to message you guys again. Bye”. Jess wrote it down and kept this next to the last sheet she had to record this message. She nodded at this and did what the message asked over the course of the week. Vegis got out of the closet a little unsteady since sending a message that far is quite taxing on Vegis’s mind.
The experiments on Corruption haven't seen many large results they were looking for but they did find something that was quite intriguing. The behavior of the Corruption in the quarantine zone and the one in the barrier were mostly the same but it seems that the one in the barrier holds something special that allows it to survive all this time without once being fed by the researchers. It didn’t seem to be consuming anything but was still generating energy somehow. All the sensors they were using showed that it wasn’t consuming the free floating mana in the air but taking it from somewhere. The explanation on how and why haven’t been discovered yet but there are some theories. The first one had to do with the fact it seems to be one of the escaped specimens. The second dip into the immaterial gave it a deeper tie to it, allowing it to suck power from it. The second theory came about because X-Rays reveal that there is a skeleton inside of it. It seems to be metallic from what they can see but what metal, they did not know. They know that all the cocoons have a metal skeleton inside of them, each a different creature. The material that composed it could have the capability to break entropy and generate energy out of nothing. The last theory that was catching wind was that they could have the ability to share energy with each other. What sparked this was that on one of the extermination missions on a close group of small moons, materials from the different moons were spread all over the colony. There was no way for them to share materials since there were no signs of transportation anywhere around the moons other than their own.
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They couldn’t study it for too long since it was consuming the moons at an unsettling pace. It would have taken them another week to cover the surfaces of the moons. They first unleashed a nuclear bombardment to wreck the surface and then sent multiple small aircrafts and drones to scour the locations that didn’t get hit with a direct blast. Each member of the cleaning team had to wear isolation gear at all times in case their ships got breached or they crashed. Of the aircraft sent down, 2 got struck down. One from a geothermal vent suddenly spewing hot water and steam and blanketing all the sensors and window, causing a crash into a cliff face. The loud noises and vibrations caused creatures made of Corruption to swarm them but drones were able to pick up and evacuate them to other crafts. The other crashed since a flock of flying Corruption creatures smashed themselves into the crafts and damaged the engines. They were barely able to escape with the land vehicles that one of the members had the foresight of asking for. When all personnel were taken back up into lower orbit, they used the more dangerous equipment seeing that the Corruption was much deeper than they thought. To end any and all life that could exist there, they sent anti matter bombs to the center of the moons, causing them to implode upon themselves, and used nanite swarms to clean up any debris that was sent flying by accident.
The entire event was recorded and sent to a small number of locations of analysis. The facility Vegis was working in was one of these locations and Vegis was shown the recording alongside many of the researchers there. Several of them went pale when they looked at the flesh infested moons and some of the others panicked. Over the next few days, the experiments stopped since they were brainstorming better ways to deal with it. By the end of the week, the experimentation began again and this time, they were trying to see the full limits of the Corruption's durability and adaptation. To do this, the researchers had many exotic materials, people, and several barrier generators to the locations to blast the trapped sample with everything they got. The incredible adaptation of the Corruption made quick work of most poisons, bacteria, fungi, and prions, but it seemed to be weak against nanites for now. Exposure to mana, led to it gaining mass, but losing any semblance of control it had. The metallic structure inside of it wasn’t magnetic and seemed to have different shades for each area it was in. Eventually, it was exposed to something from the Maouin system. It was a blue gem that released a small amount of cold air and was related to the moon goddess, Devsen. The flesh recoiled in its presence. It absolutely hated it and all the flesh condensed around the metal into the rough shape of a person. It tried to back away from the gem, but the barrier around it stopped it from getting too far.
