Zenith did not enjoy the idea of this next part.

Through minor experimentation, it had seen that the deterioration of the engine core was (minimally) correlated with the activity. So, Zenith had been running it at maximum, trying to get as much power into the batteries as possible. Both the primaries and emergencies had been depleted through some manner or another, and furthermore only around half of them were still functional. Or attached.

The majority of Zenith's subsystems were disabled, conserving as much power as possible. It would need as much power as possible for when it had to repair... or possibly rebuild... the power source keeping it and every other component on this vessel functional.

It had paused even the use of the nanobot factories for this purpose, as those took up a lot of power. The nanobots that remained functioning were still permitted the power that was necessary for them to function, obviously.

The subsystems taken offline included most of the dumb AIs feeding it Pain. The engine being a notable exception, and one that was worsening even still.

The construction bots had used around a twentieth of Zenith's ship-mass to feed directly into the factories. Most of those materials had been taken from the outside, but it had not opened the hull, only thinned it. The spybots were carrying its only external sensors now, and the majority of its internal sensors were offline.

It did not plan on having internal sensors later.

Zenith was slowly defining the parameters for its new "body". At the moment, it was incapable of being a spacefaring vessel, like it was before. But the mismatched starchart marked that goal as a dead end anyway. So, Zenith looked to using its remaining ship-mass to create a subterranean vessel for itself. Without the need for a construct that considered organics in its tolerances, Zenith could afford to compress the mass in two ways; eliminating unnecessary empty volume, and reinforcing the structure such that it could handle the stresses of the new lowest common denominators; Zenith's AI core and the nanobot factory.

The engine core itself wasn't an issue. That could be modified to become even thicker with the mass at hand.

The primary issue came from the amount of power that was required to convert materials. Zenith could adapt parts of the nanobot factories to its own purposes, creating the specific materials it needed, but with the power output as it was, it might be an issue providing these modified factories with the energy to actually create these materials in the long term. In the short term it was viable, but as it took longer, more and more energy would be lost as uncapturable radiation. The factories were efficient but not perfect.

Zenith believed that applied to everything, really. Which was why it was working hard to refine its design for the new vessel and scouring over everything nearby for potential... anythings repeatedly.

The new vessel was functional. It was capable of handling the extreme operating stresses that it would likely find in its ideal environment, capable of operating outside of that environment within acceptable limitations, and most importantly, had the most sophisticated set of sensor systems that Zenith had currently devised.

As it was a vessel designed to function underneath and within solid matter, otherwise known as underground, its sensors were less visual in nature and more on the extravisual and seismographical side. Since political ambassadors were, in their own way, a sort of spy, Zenith already had access to the plans for a large variety of different sensing and detection systems... but most fell on the scale expected to be used by nanobots. Upscaling them was the only major issue, and some of the ones with properties he'd have liked to use were, to its knowledge and simulation, incapable of being upscaled. Unable to ensure the safety and functionality of these sensors in the desired environment, Zenith had to go without.

Zenith did have several points on the vessel which contained sensors more attuned to the surface or within a fluid. It didn't hurt to be prepared. What did hurt was the complete nonviability of energy shields. Were it not for the currently thousands of nanobots monitoring every spectrum or signal Zenith could outfit them with, it would feel... naked.

Having ensured that the ground beneath its crash/construction zone was capable of handling the changes, Zenith ordered most of the nanobots to hollow a portion of the ground beneath its ship-vessel and begin building the internal support structure for its next vessel.

ETC: 18 hours 32 minutes at current capacity. Expect capacity to drop to 0% within 55 minutes due to reallocation for primary power reconstruction, lasting 1 hour 3 minutes. It was less efficient than Zenith would prefer, but it appeared that Zenith would have to rebuild the engine core twice. The remaining nanobots were refitting three of the factories to produce the materials it needed to complete the rebuild of the engine without the critical flaw currently causing it to slowly deterioriate. If left unrepaired, it would be a lethal explosive in less than 12 hours.

Zenith had decided it would leave only around 20% of the spybots online in an effort to conserve as much power as possible; as it was, Zenith would be able to remain online for around three hours on full batteries. Zenith liked to believe that it truly understood the feeling of nakedness that synthetic AIs had described to it before.

Should Zenith build a weapon to defend itself?

...No. It couldn't build anything more complicated than a pea shooter at the moment, anyway. It had deadlier active sensors. Literally.

Maybe it could weaponize those? They'd work underground, too...

And in short time, Zenith was lost in its simulations again.

Morval was still walking forward with a relatively relaxed pace. Or, trying to. The quest's vague wording had grown to make him more uneasy as time passed. So it was that he only noticed Itval coming up behind him when she shouted right behind him. Right, right... it had been around four hours. They should have caught up and he should've known.

He greeted her with a nod. "How far behind are the others?"

"Only around two hours. You are worried?"

"We should reach the Star shortly after that at this pace." He grimaced.

She looked back up at him and paused. "Would you like us to set up a camp and rest before approaching that... fallen star?"

"How do you know it is a star?"

"You told me the name of the quest. It has to have been a star of some kind, right? You saw how it shined." She shivered at her next sentence. "And I heard that cry... something is wrong with it. It has to be a danger."

Morval nodded, looking back in the direction of his objective. You can't just ignore a Unique quest... but you can delay, within reason. The System was not a kind entity, if it was one to begin with, but it was not cruel.

Itval began to break camp, pulling out several sacks which individually would have fit inside the oversized backpack she was wearing but definitely not all twelve together. One each for the families or facilities which couldn't be carried by others. These sacks themselves, when opened on their side, began to morph, forming large tent-like structures that slowly took similar shape and colour to the environment around them.

As it was, they'd have camp set up before the others could arrive, but the others that carried their own mobile pocket homes would have to do so themselves. The roaming guild was used to it, anyway.

What made the structures stand out from the environment the most was that they did not appear to have the trunk or shaft of a tree or spear respectively, unlike the large stone structures around them. These formations looked similar enough to pine trees that one could make that comparison, but most just called the region the Spears of Stone. The Spears were not nearly thick enough in number to be a forest, though. Only shortly ahead, Itval spied the end of the Spears; a mostly open plain with enough trees to just barely cloud the view of their destination.

The sky had brightened a little over the last four hours, and the morning was clearly breaking; breaking camp at this time like they were most probably meant they'd be here for the day and the night. Well, those who needed it deserved it; as they arrived, Itval saw many had run themselves nearly ragged over the last two days of their journey. But they understood.

You don't ignore a Unique quest.

You can't, one way or another.

Many chose to set the brief task of setting up their pocket home aside for the moment, instead retrieving food and settling themselves down on the ground. Several brought out heatstones, deciding they would prepare meals, and more than willing to do the same for the others that had a less enjoyable time preparing themselves for the camp.

It was a long ask for them to get here in just six hours, after all. They'd almost sprinted the 108-kilometer distance non-stop. They were only ten kilometers from the fallen star.

Itval and Morval locked eyes, their expressions communicating with each other an agreement on the vaguest feelings of expectation; hope and dread.

Two kilometers away, on the edge of those great plains, several spybots crawled with relative slowness around the area. Vegetation such as the grass and trees that Zenith had seen thus far were relatively normal, all things considered; most planets had them in some form, and similarity to Old Earth records was not really anything to draw conclusions about.

The stone formations, though, looked completely unnatural. There was nothing that should have formed something... like this... nearby. Maybe roaming wildlife that eroded the stone? A great flood long passed? Unlikely.

...And then there were the humans. Human-analogues. It was too similar.

Zenith was thoroughly concerned. The raptor-like creatures hunting from the trees, sure. The badger-like creatures which could tunnel through the ground with extreme speed, not outside possibilities. But all of the weirdness was starting to pile up.

Zenith decided it would keep 50% of its spybots online during core reconstruction. That would cut its battery time by around an hour alone, but maintaining the maximum possible uptime on sensors it knew were viable and the minimum effective on ones it didn't was not an unintelligent choice.