A great black monolith rose infinitely into the sky, breaking the Endless White.
"It's finally here..." Adam murmured.
After such a long journey, part of him thought he should break down now that he had finally reached this impossible goal. However, all he felt was a cold expectance.
The Temple was supposed to be here. There was nothing to be thankful for. He had simply completed a task and was now rewarded.
Therefore, he wasted no time before leaving the Endless White and stepping into the endless black monolith known as the First Temple.
...
After walking for only five minutes, Adam knew it would take the greatest scientists on Earth centuries to figure out even the simplest technologies here. It looked almost mystical and divine, even though everything clearly ran on technology.
Moving past small, levitating cubes, Adam ignored much of the theatrics as he moved toward the door. Although it was a fantastical place, he was only here for a single task: retrieving this temple's artifact.
Still, the endless array of some ancient alien portraits was fascinating. They looked almost human aside from their reptilian complexion.
Whirr!
Finally reaching the door, which had slid into the wall once he was close, Adam bid a silent farewell to the strange aliens and then set forth to make his own history.
...
The Temple was an endless maze. If it hadn't been for the marker his system gave him, as well as some deep instinct or familiarity, Adam knew he would have been lost from the start.
'Who are these people?' Adam wondered as he saw another group of those aliens.
Except, once again, they took on characteristics of another race. In addition to the lizard people, he had seen rows of arachnid, primate, feline, canine, and crustacean people. This most recent batch strongly resembled a humanoid version of ants.
It was almost like they were different races of some empire. But if that was the case, wouldn't these halls be considered some sort of commemoration? Adam figured that made the most sense, but then it was weird that they actively segregated each race.
'It doesn't really matter too much. These aliens are all long dead and gone. Probably killed by the Kaiju,' Adam thought as he reached the door with a red marker above it—his target. Behind the door, there would be some artifact of this empire that would help against the Kaiju.
Hopefully, where the collective races of an empire failed, humanity would succeed. Either way—
Thwack!!
Expecting this door to open just like all the others had, Adam walked right into it.
"Ow, FUCK!!" Adam exclaimed as he raised his human hand to his head.
A jolting pain dashed through his head, as if his brain was being pierced by a million needles. His entire world quickly became nothing but pain as his vision turned red.
Taking in a few short breaths, Adam couldn't hold in his frustration at the door anymore as he screamed, "Fuck you, you stupid bitch!" and slammed his bionic arm into the door.
Silence followed—a silence that echoed through the entire Temple, reverberating deep within Adam's bones. Then a soft, light blue light glowed from the cracks in the door.
Staring at it, completely dumbfounded, he took a glance at his arm. Was this what caused the door to react?
Whack!
In an attempt to test his theory, Adam slammed his bionic arm into the door yet again. This time, it simply opened like all the others. Yet, before he could see what was beyond the door, a system message appeared from his hand.
[The First Tomb has been found]
[Welcome, Adam. Leader of the First Spawn, and Inheritor of the Mantle]
...
Compared to all of the other rooms he had seen, this one was dead. There were no weird, super-advanced sci-fi things. Instead, there were five cylindrical pillars, each fitted with some kind of cube at the top.
These pillars formed a bit of a pentagon, and dead in the middle of this formation was a sixth cube. However, this one was not hoisted by a pillar. Instead, it simply levitated.
'What's this?' Adam wondered as he walked forward.
The closer he got to the cubes, every single follicle of hair on his body stood straight. It would be no understatement to say that even the air of this place was filled with an ethereal chill.
Yet, there was no possible way he'd back down. Not now, not before, not ever. There was something calling him to the cubes, something he wished to answer.
Power.
[Special Quest updated — entered the Deacon's Repository]
[Activate the five Beacons to receive your reward]
'Five beacons, huh?' Adam thought as he looked at those five cubes from earlier.
It appeared that he had just gotten the most convenient happenstance ever. At this point, it almost felt orchestrated...
'And so what if it is? Every quest so far has given me undeniably huge rewards. If something wanted to orchestrate its demise, let it,' Adam thought to himself as he faltered for a second.
It was a scary thought that someone behind the scenes was 'helping' him so much. However, he wasn't wrong. Every quest so far had given very good rewards. If he wanted to stop the apocalypse, he couldn't back down.
No, he wouldn't back down. He had made it through the Endless White, through eternities of aimless walking even after his crew had perished. It was evident he was defined by his indomitable spirit.
Hesitation had no place in this world. Without wasting another second, Adam placed his bionic arm on each cube, activating them.
Then he turned to the sixth cube, watching it patiently. There was no need for the system or anything else to tell him what was going to happen next. In just a short amount of time, the sixth cube's contents were going to be revealed.
A bright blue light emanated from each of the cubes as they rose through the air. A soft humming sound emanated from the pillars, but otherwise, the entire room was silent.
Seconds later, the cubes fell back to their resting place. For just a second, Adam thought he had failed somehow.
But then...
"Oh shit, that feels good!" some voice called from the sixth cube, followed immediately by a series of sounds that strangely resembled Adam's idea of a robot stretching.
Taking a closer look, Adam blinked to make sure he wasn't going crazy. Just five yards ahead of him was a toddler Mecha.
"Hey, I ain't no toddler!" it called out, its gray and muted metallic face somehow turning a very bright shade of red. Seemingly embarrassed by this outfit, the small Mecha hid its face from Adam by completely dislocating its neck and leaving it dangling behind its back.
Unsure of what else to do, Adam watched the peculiar little thing in silence.
"Keh. Keh." After a great effort, the Mecha finally reached behind itself, grabbed its head, and yanked it back to its regular place.
Then it flew to Adam, its entire frame maybe as large as his head. Putting on his best show of authority, the Mecha turned its entire left side into a rocket launcher as it said, "I'll have you know, I'm very old. A few millennia, at least!"
Shrugging, Adam turned back to his system interface to see if he had earned any rewards.
[Reward obtained!]
[First Mecha acquired — Set!]
'Fuck. I'm stuck with this... babbling idiot,' Adam lamented, hoping he was at least strong.
As if it had read his mind when Adam called the Mecha an idiot, it raised the rocket launcher to Adam's face as it growled, "Hey, I don't babble, you asshole!"
'Yeah, OK.'
Ignoring the little guy, Adam studied his bionic arm to see if there was some option to store this Mecha. At the end of the day, he had hoped for a slightly better reward. Like, for example, a Mecha that would be more than just an annoying distraction for Kaiju.
Weren't they supposed to be hundreds of meters tall? Adam was pretty sure that's how big they were in those kinds of movies, anyway.
As it was, this little football was nothing more than a pet—
"HEY! I'M NOT LITTLE!" the Mecha squeaked, its oil boiling with anger.
"Is this idiot Inheritor really trying to stuff me in some subspace?"
If the little Mecha wasn't already mad at its own impotence, Adam figured that it would have probably ended him right there. However, as it stood, it couldn't do much of anything to stop him as Adam searched for some way to store away the football.
The only problem there was that, for some reason, there wasn't a way to store the Mecha. At least, not that Adam could tell.
Sighing, he said, "I was. Since you don't know what privacy is, I'm just going to be honest. I was expecting something more than just a stuffed animal from this place."
"I'M MORE THAN JUST A STUFFED ANIMAL!!! I AM SET, THE ORIGINAL AND STRONGEST MECHA AND YOU WILL RES—"
"Get on my shoulder and shut up. Now that my quest is over, I don't care about this dump anymore." Adam cut off Set the Football before turning to walk out.
However, the door he had walked through was now closed. Overhead, all of the soft lights that had worked together to illuminate the room had turned off. They were alone in complete darkness.
"Oh, good job, you idiot! Now we're going to be stuck with Draken!" Set droned, putting his tiny hands on his cheeks as he pouted.
"Draken?" Adam asked over his shoulder.
Instead of the Mecha answering him, though, a loud roar resounded through the entire Temple. Set wasn't the only thing that woke up.
[Beast Kaiju: Draken detected. It has not seen you yet, so proceed with caution]
Somewhere in the darkness, there was a [Beast] Kaiju.