More than half a day later, Justin had finished searching what seemed to be every inch of the cenote’s salt walls with his tentacles, even going back and redoubling his search of the previous tunnels.

  But after all his effort, one thing was confirmed. The starfish had been right. There was no exit from the cenote.

  It was truly the last open cavern in the winding series of salt caves. The entire system was sealed.

  And after coming to that realization, what hit Justin wasn’t terror or a bottomless depression but unquenchable anger. He was tempted to reignite his feud with the starfish where it not for the exhaustive list of logical arguments against that course of action.

  As all the evidence seemed to point to, the starfish with its unique biology was the only living creature that had ever inhabited this cave system until he had shown up, and now it was looking to be his permanent roommate down here. At least until one of them starved. Which from the way things were going Justin was confident would be him.

  For as riveting a conversation partner as the starfish was, its extremophile biology had allowed it to persist down here for presumably years.

  Justin…well, wasn’t so adapted.

  His understanding of his body had improved somewhat after the evolution, but while in the E-Grade he was still beholden to the ball and chain called basic nutrition.

  Oxygen he could scrounge up easily enough, as the cave system was still technically exposed to the outside world via the inaccessible drainage vent, but food was another issue. His biomass storage would only tick down now that he had nothing to refill it with.

  Yet these facts that would have normally weighed heavy on his mind were merely passing placidly over Justin like an inoffensive mist.

  After returning to the cenote after his search, Justin’s body floated on the surface of the water. A system window had been hanging in the air for the past half an hour, invisible to the starfish, which had slunk to the depths of the cenote once more where it was busy regenerating its eyes.

  [Stage Quest: Acquire 2 or more Talent(s)]

  [Time Left: 29:08:01:12]

  [Progress: 0 / 2]

  [Completion Reward: Random Reward Selection]

  [Punishment for Failure: Level Lock]

  ‘It’s actually too bad that I can’t sleep anymore, otherwise I could wait out my death far faster.’

  Justin no longer equated a Level Lock with death, as his confidence in the parasite's ability to revert control had shifted after the evolution, but still his belief in his death was steadfast. He knew it was only a matter of time before he starved.

  At the rate his body sustained itself, that could take anywhere from several years to under one if he atrophied quickly after the Lock, which would happen in just under a month.

  Yes, he had all but accepted death, which felt much different this time around than it had in the desert.

  Making peace with your demise was easier the second time it happened, Justin supposed, but the feeling was far more somber than the rage he had exhibited then.

  If he ever got a third chance, he would never let himself fall into weakness like this again. He internally made such a meaningless vow.

  Being confined like this, not by man or daemon, but nature itself and his own mistakes, was humiliating. It confronted him with just how powerless he still was. He could imagine himself as the most capable being on the planet, with access to abilities no other being had, but all that still would mean nothing in the face of an inescapable situation.

  He had been caught unprepared. It was as simple as that.

  Justin began to close his eyes, another meaningless action given how dark it was to begin with, when a sudden flash caught the corner of his vision.

  ‘What was that?’

  His shock was so immediate that he splashed around in the water, turning to find whatever had let off that brief light. It had been slight, and fast enough that Justin wondered if it had even happened, but he couldn’t doubt his only hope now. He wanted it to have happened, needed it to have happened. Whatever it had been, it must have been.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Something on the other side of the cavern flashed. There it was again!

  Justin was now sure of it. With uncontained eagerness he pulled himself to that side of the cenote, eagerly awaiting the next flash.

  ‘And there it is again! What is this? I never saw this when searching earlier?’

  It was some kind of small spark, white in color like the rest of the salt’s illumination, only much brighter. Buried beneath the crystals, Justin could hardly make out what it was.

  He chipped away, before his tentacles that had been brought to a fine point were bent away after hitting against something hard. Harder than salt? That included many minerals and stones, but it wasn’t just rock that Justin had come upon.

  ‘My god…that’s sheet metal.’

  Not an unrefined rocky block of it, but processed, moulded, sheet-like titanium. The same kind used in…

  ‘The spaceships of primitive civilizations. But how is this here?’

  Like a madman, Justin pulled off large chunks of salt crystal from the cavern wall, before long exposing the titanium shielding that kept on going.

  Each crystal he pulled off was the size of his head or larger, yet more of the curved metal siding was always underneath. Until he reached the entrance point of the cenote, an exposed part in the material’s structure where water was still pouring in.

  That had been the way he had come in, and it was only then did he realize the cave system hadn’t naturally been formed.

  Immediately Justin went to the best source on this. Asking a question immediately after reconnecting with the starfish, he waited for an answer.

  “Titanium? Ship?”

  The starfish gesticulated in the dark water. At the deep level Justin had joined it at, he couldn’t recognize its body language but he realized it was confused.

  “Metal. Confusion.”

  The starfish then replied to that as best it could.

  “Innocence. Extinction. Old.”

  Justin’s face scrunched. As the expressed concepts made their way into his mind, he at first had trouble picking them apart. What did innocence have to do with his question?

  But perhaps, the starfish was making sense as best it could. Innocence might not mean that it was free from guilt, but the starfish’s way of saying it is uninvolved. Did ‘extinction’ and ‘old’ mean that those responsible were dead, or they had left a long time ago?

  The starfish wasn’t done with their mental link however.

  “Birth. Hibernation. Protection!”

  Now Justin was even more confused. He could guess that those concepts likely referred to the starfish itself, given it had so far been able to demonstrate its capability for self-awareness, but they stumped Justin as for their meaning. Unless they didn’t have anything to do with the long-gone people, but their ship itself?

  Was the starfish acting as a warden? For what? Justin sent over his question.

  “Protection. Confusion.”

  “Protection. Protection. Remain.”

  ‘Perhaps it doesn’t know what it's protecting? It barely sounds like it understands the concept to begin with, though I wonder why it's so adamant around the feeling of ‘remain’.’

  Unless that was the very method to protect, Justin thought.

  Looking around the cenote, where had the starfish chosen to make its home? The very bottom. And why was that?

  There were no predators around for it to hide from, and Justin certainly believed that the discongruent instinct to do so wouldn’t have persisted along with its mutant physiology and size.

  Neither was there any benefit food-wise to sticking at the bottom. It was just as salty at the top of the cenote as the bottom, and Justin didn’t see any other things it could subsist off at the bottom of the cavern than that.

  Then what was it doing down there? It was covering something with its body.

  All this time, the starfish had been acting more like a shield than a guardian, something the original owners of this ship had probably intended. Now Justin had to figure out why.

  Disconnecting from their link, he wondered how to go about getting beneath it. Just asking it likely wouldn’t get him very far. It almost certainly didn’t understand why it was covering whatever it was covering, just that it had the urge to do so. Rationalizing it away from those feelings would take forever if he could only communicate through concepts.

  Could he just go around it? That was possible.

  It had most likely attacked him in the beginning out of survival instinct, not from the recognition he was an intruder. If he thought about it from the starfish’s perspective, Justin had been the first other living being it had ever seen. The starfish had been driven by instinct in that conflict, but now it shouldn’t hold any animosity toward him.

  Betting on that, Justin went with the second option and dove downward. At this point, he was just going off of touch. The dimness of the salt crystals came into view after nearly a minute of descending further, and then Justin saw it.

  Another bit of titanium. This time, it was a piece that was sticking all the way out from the crystals, bright enough that Justin could properly see the electronics from it blinking. Like a moth to a flame he swam straight for it, beneath a sky of the starfish’s undulating cilia.

  ‘A hatch. My feeling was right. This ship is primitive, but far beyond the capabilities of the natives here.’

  As far as Justin knew, his team had been the first to make physical contact with the civilization, but maybe they had been wrong.

  Who had been here before them?