Ch. 96: Riley's Travels - Black

Riley's last destination was the worst planet of the bunch. All the reports before of the Black planet were single-paged documents that ended with 'I personally hate being on this planet.' And nobody could really blame the people who made the reports for adding that sentence. 

The planet was, similar to the Grey planet, nothing but an icy rock, but unlike the Grey planet, planet Black didn't have a huge underwater ocean with regulated temperature. 

Instead, Black kept its heat with a far simpler method. A series of underground caves. The planet's sheer size and density was the biggest factor in keeping the area closest to the core warm, but that didn't extend to the planet's surface. The World Tree existed in a cavern hundreds of miles below the planet's surface, in a fairly temperature-regulated part of the rocks, but none of the Black Saibamen were near it. 

The Black Saibamen had a unique biology that had them hibernating in different parts of the planet, far below the surface, almost all the time. Their active times only extended to about a single day a year, when they'd go to the planet's uninhabitable surface and bring a block of ice down to wherever they happened to be hibernating. Over the course of their year in hibernation, the ice would melt and be absorbed through their skin to give them the hydration that they'd need. As for food, it'd be absorbed through their skin the same way. As the World Tree created fruits, those fruits would drop to the ground, uneaten, after which they'd rot, and the nutrients inside of them would end up in the air, where it'd drift to the Black Saibamen sleeping throughout the planet and be absorbed. Naturally, this made the air beneath the surface poisonous to humans, but that was a small price to pay for the Black Saibamen's continued survival.

As for the Black Saibamen themselves, since they were active for such a limited amount of time, their lifespans were also long. Honestly, the Core Girls didn't know exactly how long each Black Saibaman would live. Probably several centuries, not that it'd really matter, since they weren't active long enough to ever organize themselves into a cohesive civilization.

But in return for their sloth-ish lives and nearly unlimited lifespans, the Black Saibamen were strong. Even stronger than the Reds, in fact. Their current average power level was at 500,000. Insane. Strong as Frieza's first form, even though they'd never actually use it. Each one of them could theoretically destroy the planet that they were on with a breath, if they ever felt like it. Good thing that all that power made them too sluggish to bother with it. Riley shuddered, just imagining how strong their second generation would be in a few centuries. But for now, the black planet felt more like a lifeless rock than anything else.

"That's it, huh?" After writing down the exact air pressure on the surface of the planet, as well as a bunch of other geological things, Riley realized that her reports were finished. The Red and Yellow Saibamen were going to end up the biggest assets in any 'battle' that Mistress would need them for, but the Black Saibamen would end up outputting the most energy.

The Grey Saibamen were, surprisingly, the most average versions across the cosmos, discounting the docile Green Saibamen, and the White and Blue Saibamen were almost certain to end up with the more advanced civilizations. The arms race between those two races would likely get pretty intense in a few centuries, around the time that the Black Saibamen began to propagate, if things continued as they were going.

But the most important thing that Riley had learned...

"So that's my report." Riley handed the report to Chelsea, who immediately passed it to another girl, whose job it was to pass important information to the girl who was responsible for compiling the various reports that the Core Girls tended to compile about the Core Universe and all the projects that they had going on. That girl would take all of the information that Riley had gathered, would transfer it to a computer storage, and give Chelsea a vastly shortened version at the end of the day to look over.

"You look like you've figured some things out." Chelsea noted. The dark cloud that had been hanging over the poor girl ever since Chelsea had her do the predictions was gone, and Riley's head was poised a little higher than it had been before.

Riley nodded, "Yeah. I realized that we're gods." She told the older Core Girl.

Chelsea nodded, gesturing for Riley to continue.

"As mortals, we're pretty old. We're physically unbeatable, pretty much. But we're not mortals anymore..." Riley trailed off for a moment, "Strength isn't important to us anymore. We've grown past that. I thought that, because I was weaker than you, I wasn't important to Mistress. That nothing that I did could help her in any way, but I was wrong."

Chelsea snorted softly, "Duh." She couldn't help but prod, making Riley smile a bit.

"As gods, we're really young. So is Mistress, and she's going to need us as she, and the Core, grow, just like those Saibamen. She's going to need more resources, and more of us as that happens. I just need to work on sharpening whatever unique skill, or personality trait that I have that Mistress might be able to use in the future. So, I'll try a bunch of things until I find it!"

Chelsea smiled, understanding what the younger Core Girl was talking about. Every Core Girl started with a smattering of Hanna's memories. In those memories, Hanna had always been alone. Her mother had been killed in a car accident when she'd been little, and she'd spent so much of her effort shielding her younger brother from her father's resentment that she'd pretty much constantly felt useless and inferior.

The reason that the Core had been created in the first place had been Hanna doing her best to overcompensate for the weakness that she'd always been told she had, so the vast majority of the girls had a terrifyingly laser-like focus on getting as physically strong as possible, so that Mistress never again felt sad because of something bad that happened because of their weakness, but strength was a funny thing. Chelsea was glad that Riley had taken a step towards figuring that out.