Max was sitting in a chair in the ship's control room, looking at several screens that displayed the area outside the ship. Each screen showed a view of both the space surrounding the ship and points of interest within a radius of thousands of kilometers.
It was a multi-point monitoring system. Due to the lack of crew members on board, he had to keep an eye on everything.
He was analyzing which path to take; if he went to his home planet, there might be some unknown danger, so he needed to check the other stations that had been built and see if anything had been left behind.
Looking at the nearby star systems, each with its own peculiarities, he chose a large system three light-years away. It would likely have a more complete station.
Max steered the Pearl toward that system. As the Pearl began to accelerate, it started to vibrate and spin as if creating gravity around itself; the engine began running at full speed, and the twin stars spun faster and faster.
A wave of energy and gravity began to leak out and accelerate the Pearl.
At ten percent, space was vibrating.
Twenty percent, and gravity increased.
Thirty percent, and the stars spun faster and faster,
Forty percent, and a force field was protecting the pearl.
When it reached fifty percent of the speed of light, it stabilized. It managed to remain stable.
The journey would take six years at that speed.
As he traveled through the void, he encountered nothing but cosmic dust, various gases, and stellar energy.
After a month of travel.
He stopped when he saw a large frozen meteor floating in front of him.
Max decided to stop and send some robots to explore it and see if there was anything useful.
After all, even though the ship was self-sufficient, some materials would be beneficial.
After a few hours of collecting, some rare metals and frozen water were found.
Which were transported to the ship.
When he started the ship to continue his journey, he would stop whenever he found something rare or new data.
After completing a full year of travel, Max finished his hyperspace warp research.
He knew the path to follow; using the quantum realm, he could harness negative energy and create a protective bubble around the pearl while using a quantum channel to traverse space.
But this technology is very complicated and will take some time to complete. So far, he has only managed to produce a small amount of negative energy using the twin-star engine.
As he was thinking about this, the ship came to a sudden stop, and Max was thrown against the wall, which only suffered a slight dent despite his sturdy build, while he emerged unscathed.
Apart from the chaotic rush of his blood.
Which soon returned to normal.
He saw the image on the screen of an island as large as several planets in the void.
It looked as though the pearl was fixed in orbit around the island.
From the image, the place seemed empty, with nothing but land.
He sent some robots to survey the area and see if they could find anything.
However, they were stopped by a barrier and couldn't advance any further.
He found that intriguing, but it seemed he had no choice but to land.
Since no matter what he tried, the ship wouldn't budge, he could attack the island, but that might make the situation worse.
Max decided to grab a laser weapon shaped like a bracelet and descend to see what was holding the ship in place.
When he reached the surface of the pearl, he looked at the island five hundred meters away.
He jumped and used the thrusters on his body, and like a comet, he descended onto the large island in two seconds.
When he landed, it was like a meteor tearing through the sky; a hole several meters wide was torn in the ground.
Max stood up and brushed the dust off his clothes.
When he looked around, it seemed there were various abandoned houses.
Made of wood and straw.
That surprised him greatly, since none of this had appeared on the screen.
They looked like ancient houses from before civilization had made any progress in energy technology.
Max moved forward cautiously, going from house to house, but all he found were simple rooms with nothing but wooden furniture.
He found it all strange; none of it seemed to make sense.
When he reached the center of the village, he saw a fifteen-meter-tall obelisk the color of obsidian.
As he scanned it, he realized the material was arranged unnaturally. As if the atoms had been handpicked to create this structure.
When he got close, he felt a void surrounding the obelisk.
Every ounce of energy was being sucked into it.
As he placed his hand on the object, he saw a magnificent vision of the solar system forming, organizing itself, a massive sun being born, growing, and finally dying and forming a black hole.
He pulled his hand away and felt breathless, as if he had used up all his energy.
As he tried to regain his strength,
A vibration began to be felt on the ground, as if something were approaching.
Max didn't think twice and ran to hide in a more secure house to recover his energy.