Bella waved casually. "Don't worry about me. If the fighting stays relatively light, I can probably survive here for around ten days. Worry about Optimus Prime instead... Have you found any traces of the Decepticons?"
"We need to reach higher ground and look for signal sources." Jazz pointed toward a distant mountain.
The Autobots still could not understand what Bella was doing. They had no idea why she had not suffocated on a world with such a nitrogen-heavy atmosphere. This made no scientific sense?! But there were more important matters at hand, and they quickly turned their attention back to rescuing Optimus Prime.
They needed to climb to the summit before they could determine their position and choose a search direction.
This was another disadvantage of Teleportation. They had acted too hastily. If they had arrived by spacecraft, much of this work could have been done outside the atmosphere instead of waiting until they were already on the surface to begin reconnaissance.
They moved in fits and starts, correcting their direction from time to time.
Bella could fly above the ground with the Cloak of Levitation, while the Autobots had to walk. Titan was even more desolate than they had imagined.
The atmospheric pressure was slightly higher than Earth's. Thick clouds covered the world and the temperature was low, but fortunately none of them were particularly affected by the harsh environment. They soon crossed a rather large ethane lake.
A sudden silicon dust storm drastically slowed their search.
Bella hated highly technological species like these because advanced technology often countered magic extremely well, and she did not know how to counter it in return. Right now, the electromagnetic interference spread across the entire world prevented her from finding much useful information.
The silicon dust storm pushed the interference to the extreme. The violent wind seemed endless, without even half a moment's pause. Even hiding behind Jazz, Bella still found it difficult to move forward.
She said, "Let's split up and search. There's no point fighting this storm!"
"Fine." Jazz treated her as an equal teammate; he didn't regard her as some frail Earthling who could only stay behind and cheer them on.
They divided up the search directions. The Autobots were inferior to the Decepticons in combat, but they had fought for so many years without being wiped out, so naturally they had their own strengths. They were extremely good at searching for electronic signals. Jazz found four relatively strong signals on the world, and any of the four could be a Decepticon base. There were four of them in total, so they could search separately.
Bella picked one of the four targets at random, then took a communications wristwatch from Ratchet. Magic surged through the Cloak of Levitation and sent her shooting into the sky. She burst out of the silicon dust storm and flew toward the northwest of the world.
"Faster, faster! Faster!" Bella kept urging the Cloak of Levitation to go faster. Like a dark crimson arrow, she streaked straight across the sky.
Her physical condition had previously limited her to subsonic flight. Now that her body was much stronger, the Cloak of Levitation could carry her beyond the speed of sound.
Flying was an incredibly exhilarating experience. Even though the ability did not belong to her personally, she still felt delighted. The land stretched beneath her feet, and whenever she looked up, enormous Saturn filled more than half her field of view, as if she could touch it simply by reaching out. The sensation was intoxicating.
Bella avoided most of the dust storms on the surface, though lightning in the sky posed a considerable threat, so she did not dare fly too fast.
"Huh? Is that the target Jazz mentioned? It looks... it doesn't look like a Decepticon base!" None of the three Autobots could fly, so naturally Bella was the first to reach a target.
Looking down from the air, she saw an extremely ruined structure. Judging by its foundations, the building had once been square, somewhat like a Mayan pyramid but much steeper. The one wall still standing bore a symbol resembling a Möbius strip cut through the middle.
"This place is really creepy! Do you think it's dangerous?" Bella asked the Cloak of Levitation.
The lower edge of the cloak rose and quickly shook twice.
"Dangerous? I knew that without you telling me. This place can actually interfere with my Divination. What a strange place!" Bella did not know much about Titan. She knew of the Eternals, and most of what she knew about Thanos's dark history came from the Avengers movies.
She did not need extensive knowledge to recognize a sealed site. This temple-like or shrine-like structure seemed to contain some kind of major boss! Who had been sealed here? Surely it was not Thanos?
Driven by curiosity, she flew a few kilometers farther.
"Come closer... come closer..."
"I can grant you power. You want magic?... I can give you tremendous magical power!"
"My gem! Thanos! Thief! My gem!"
A jumble of whispers sounded inside her mind. Bella guarded her thoughts firmly and used the Secrecy Portfolio to peer at the other party with great caution.
This was the downside of the Secrecy Portfolio. It was the same principle as Thor being impulsive or Loki, the God of Mischief, lying so much he could fool even himself. Whenever something involved secrets or gossip, Bella became especially excited. If she saw people arguing, she wanted to go over and watch. If people started fighting, she would run over to spectate. When she encountered something secret, she found it a little difficult to control herself...
Wanting to know everything while also being drawn to secrecy was a deeply contradictory mindset.
Bella carefully focused. Looking across time and space, at first she could see nothing but darkness. Only when she pulled her viewpoint farther back did she realize there was still light around her. The black mist she had been looking at was simply too enormous.
"What the hell is this thing?" Bella could only make a rough guess. At first, she vaguely thought the black mist resembled a human shape, but then it seemed wrong. This thing had wings and a tail? Was it a dragon? It did not look much like the dragons she knew either!
The black mist offered no resistance to her observation. Instead, it opened part of its mental world and allowed her to look freely.
In the memories the black mist showed her, the figure of a purple-skinned man appeared. He stood more than two meters tall and was powerfully built, but compared with the black mist, he was as tiny as an ant. The purple man seemed to be speaking with the black mist. Then, while the mist was not paying attention, he stole a gem glowing with yellow light from its body.
This scene was much clearer to Bella. Although the purple man's features were indistinct, she was certain he was Thanos. The yellow gem was an Infinity Stone on the same level as the Eye of Agamotto: the Mind Stone!
How powerful were the six Infinity Stones? Anyone who had watched the movies basically knew, and Bella certainly understood as well.
Bella had personally come into contact with the Time Stone and had used it more than three hundred times in total, so she was already extremely familiar with it. She was deeply interested in these extraordinary gems that contained the universe's rules and fundamental energies.
The Infinity Stone shown by the black mist made her heart pound even harder. It was the Mind Stone!