Chapter 4

It has been about 40 systems already since Arcadia suffice to say the mythical Gaia world he is searching is still a myth.

In the past few months he has done nothing but go to systems, scan them, drop seed modules before hopping into the next system and repeating the whole process all over again.

Saying that he now has 47 systems under his control while they might be still in their first phase of development it's only a matter of time before they became fully developed and start churning out endless droid armies for his great Galactic conquest.

Vlad has seen of how formidable alien empires can really be and can sometimes take the combined efforts several large guilds, corporations, empires or factions (whatever the players chose to call themselves) to deal with.

It was precise that such an event has occurred the forced most of the major player factions to form the Stellar Holy Roman Imperium, which pretty much every player is a de facto member of.

Well not that it matters much as like the name suggests the government structure takes great inspiration from the Holy Roman Empire of the past in that it's decentralized to the utmost extreme.

As every player/faction has their own interests and agenda which makes it pretty hard if not impossible to unite.

The only time that billions of players could be united in a common goal is if a great threat appears and threatens them all.

Such was the case of the first disaster when a large alien empire first made it appearance. Those were still the early days of Final Frontier and there's only a few guilds that has super capitals.

It was a bloody way that saw the destruction of half of the player based total assets.

Of course that threat has been dealt with and has been reduced to a few scattered remnants. But Oh boy that was truly an exciting time to be a player as with a player base of billions it saw various exciting and insane player stunts.

That time was before large robotic armies became available as those were the early early days.

Nowadays, the player base has grown so much that if such a threat as the first disasters were to occur it would be just a sector threat.

Saying that the "Emperor" of the Stellar Holy Roman Emperium is mostly just a fancy name own by the largest guild at the time and would only be useful if a major disaster were to occur.

Recently due to the strengthening of the player base it's been rarely used, but as most of major factions survived the first disaster is still occupying major positions so the title is pretty much there for show and is rarely used anymore . Of course new factions wanting to someday being the largest guild and have the prestigious crown of being called Emperor even if it's in name only opted to keep the status quo.

There are also times when Emperor holder drank to much of their kool-aid thinking they're Emperors in the sense of actual Emperors of centralized governments.

Suffice to say their tyranny got everyone turned against them and after a series of bloody battles have been forced to give up much of their assets and downsize to a minor faction.

Anyway, do not underestimate aliens as even with 47 systems under his control in a galaxy with 400 billion stars there could be giant empires out there that could easily crush his little-tiny-winey group of planets without even realizing what it just stomp over.

So he has be careful on who he picks a fight with and as boring as seeding planets with seed modules is it might be, this will be his only lifeline when he encounters a bunch of nasty aliens.

Vlad sighs as he reads through the preliminary servery reports on the plants in system.

'yes yes..... oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere... 90% water 10% land.... signs of multicellular life... WAIT WHAT!?' Vlad stopped in his tracks as he reread the report again.

'2nd planet in system... blah blah... Here it is.... signs of multicellular life' Vlad then quickly drives to ship in orbit of the 2nd planet.

It's a world that's 90% covered in water and only 10% land, it has a gravity of 1.2G, a breathable atmosphere primarily made up oxygen and nitrogen. It is suitable for human life habitation.

Vlad then looks the life signs signature on the planet.

'wow I think I just hit the jackpot' Vlad exclaimed as he see the planet is teeming with life signs.

He quickly launches a drone and watches the cam feed in real-time full of expectations.

He watched as the drone descends through the atmosphere, the outer shell of the drone gradually rose in temperature.

The drone buckled under the extreme heat and pressure as it made its entry to the planet.

Even despite under such extreme conditions it held together quite neatly as it was built to handle such conditions and more.

Once passed the atmospheric entry the outer layer of the drone gradually cools before going back to normal.

The drone first heads towards the landmass to see any signs of life.

It quickly zooms pass the large body of water and quickly approaches the largest landmass on the planet.

The content gradually came into view and disappointingly it's completely devoid of life.

But how could it be?

Vlad frowns before ordering the drone to dive underwater and drone obediently dove into the sea.

'this is it!' Vlad thought as soon as he saw the camera feed.

Once in the water Vlad saw a wide variety of marine creatures.

Creatures ranging from sponges, corals and reefs to arthropods to cephalopods to vertebrates.

It was truly a sight to behold as the various color of sponges are quite eye-catching.

'wait is that?' Vlad then ordered the drone to drive closer to a particular creature.

It has an elongate body having a head region bearing one pair of large, lateral eye lobes, each borne on a short stalk, the single pair of appendages attached at the ventral, anterior margin. The 13 segments of the appendage in back It propelled itself through the water by undulating the flexible flaps on the sides of its body. Each flap sloped below the one more posterior to it,and this overlapping allowed the lobes on each side of the body to act as a single "fin", maximizing the swimming efficiency.

'it that an Anomalocaris?' Vlad thought as the creature has a striking resemblance to a subspecies of prehistoric arthropods found on earth during the Paleozoic era.

'Simply remarkable' Vlad thought as he has read the theory of parallel evolution but he simply dismissed it as "one of those" nonsense theories.

Anyway a "fish" swam pass that caught Vlad attention away from the Arthropod.

It a fish with its head and thorax were covered by articulated armored plates. It swam pass the drone to chase after a school of smaller fish.

'Placodermi' Vlad thought as he stares at the vicious-looking fish chasing as a bunch of little fish.

Placodermi is a class of armoured prehistoric fish, which lived from the Silurian to the end of the Devonian period.

'Then there's also Orthocerida' Vlad thought with excitement as he sees an armored shelled creature with tentacles swimming at the back ground.

Orthocerida is an order of extinct Orthoceratoid cephalopods also known as the Michelinocerida that lived from the Early Ordovician (490 million years ago) possibly to the Late Triassic (240 million years ago).

The shell is usually long, and may be straight ("orthoconic") or gently curved. In life, these animals may have been similar to the modern squid, except for the long shell. The internal structure of the shell consists of concavo-convex chambers linked by a centrally-placed tube called a siphuncle.

Then there's Osteostraci swimming at the deeper waters.

The Osteostraci ("Bony Shells") or osteostracans, are an extinct group of armored jawless vertebrates which lived from the Early Silurian (about 430 million years) to the Late Devonian (about 370 million years). Most of them have a characteristic horseshoe-shaped head, which consists of a massive endoskeletal skull, covered with a shield of dermal bone.

The body of osteostracans is massive, covered with large, diamond-shaped scales, and bears primitively two dorsal fins.

'gorgeous looking thing' Vlad thought as he observes the live Osteostraci swimming in the sea.

The bony white plates on the prehistoric fish made the fish look aesthetically pleasing in a certain sense.

Vlad drove the drone around some more looking a various exotic and strange creatures.