Chapter 63 - The hunt begins

When he began to excavate he noticed that the metal object was pointing downwards and went a bit sideways. Deciding to see the sideways part first, as it was easier to do compare to digging towards the center of the hill, in order to find out what he was dealing with. After a few minutes his digging revealed two metal plates connected to each other. Towards the top of the hill, deeper inside he found two additional plates that had been screwed orthogonal to the first two. The two upper plates were both placed in a symmetrical order, one on each lower plate, mirroring each other. Between both lower plates he found, after some more digging, two large pipes leading towards the center of the hill.

Curiously he observed it even more closely. He somehow got the feeling to have seen it somewhere. Switching to more comfortable sitting position he went through all the information the world will had granted him. Before him in his mind he saw the development of everything that could be called civilization. From the first stone used to cut things, primitive tools, vehicles, metal working and much more all the way until today's technology. Modern vehicles, large capitol buildings with almost countless integrated pieces of technology, weapons far more powerful than he expected, the list went on and on. In what must have been three hours he had mentally traveled through time and seen the history of mankind. The creation, the existence and finally the end of everything that had been built by humanity. When he now looked at the object in front of him, armed with the immeasurable knowledge he had gained he could quickly decipher what it was or at least make assumptions.

What rested in front of him must have been a flying object which used propulsion to move itself. Because of the small amount of dirt covering it it must have been built in recent times. Extending his hand he grabbed the piece that was visible and imagined to pull it inside his inventory. Almost immediately the hill shrunk by about two meters making it loose almost all of its height. It really was a lot especially when considering that the hill was around 18 meters long and a bid shorter in width. The hall of hings fell and although a few people hurt their heads a bit most got away without any big injuries. The older kids grabbed the younger ones that stood to close to the still sinking ground and pulled up the slope of the depression.

While everyone was retreating Kaiser stood still, close to the ground which was still ever so slowly caving in. As everyone stood opposite of him, busy with looking after the smaller kids who wanted to take a closer look at the strange phenomenon, he was watching something entirely different. He observed the object he had retrieved from within the hill. He simply couldn't believe what he saw. Although it was badly damaged, especially in the front where it had impacted the ground and pierced itself deep within the earth, it was still very recognizable.

A relic that had remained until his time, an old and discarded weapon of the capital, an aircraft of the Hawk series, the Artemis. In the time before the war between the capitol and the districts had ended and before the air defense system of the capital had been built the capitol had mostly relied on aircrafts similar to the fighter jets of his world to defend against other large aircrafts such as bombers etc which were sent by the districts. The Artemis model had been the fourth model which had been built for this purpose and also the last one. Few had been built of them and none were still active. After the capitol had defeated the districts and built their air defense system they had deemed the upkeep of the Hawks to be to high and unnecessary and as a result had stopped not only the production but also destroyed existing models.

(The previous part is completely made up and I have found no evidence for this but also nothing against this so hooray for creative freedom)

Today the capitol only used large aircrafts to deploy troops or drop bombs or perform similar tasks. Most research on improving flight had been canceled and the funds had gone into different fields the capitol deemed to be more important. Although a few plans and instruction manuals had been left behind, few still dedicated their time to these things.

Because of these circ.u.mstances it could be considered to be a lucky coincidence that Kaiser had been the one to take it. Not only did he knew how it was built, he also knew how to operate it and much more. As soon as he had time he could repair it or even built it from scratch. Should he decide to repair it then he would need to invest a lot of time since various things needed to be fixed.

Fist of all and the most obvious problem was that the c.o.c.kpit was completely destroyed and crunched together. He would most likely need to completely rebuild it. The wings had been pressed close to the body of the plane but it was easier to fix that. The tail was in almost perfect condition and the least amount of work would be spent on that. Another large issue was the rust. It would create a lot of problems in flight and didn't look pretty at all so he would need to remove all of it.

The one good point however was that it was almost full on fuel and only a small part had been used. Perhaps the rebels had jammed all signals in their area and managed to slam it into the ground or the pilots had more than just a few technical difficulties, who knows?

Another fantastic thing was that the generators and similar equipment which allowed the hovercrafts to fly was still in good condition and that was perfect. This was the case because, contrary to ordinary hovercrafts which possessed one large circular hole that was used by the generators to give the hovercraft the ability to fly, his newly acquired Artemis model had two, one on each wing.

For the speed for which modern hovercrafts used the two large jet engines on the side his possessed two in the center which were connected to the pipes he had seen between the tail.

Sadly, what ultimately saddened him was that by being deprived of his creation ability he was currently unable to fix it due to a lack of materials and tools. Should he acquire these and get used to the feeling of handling them he could easily fix all the damage. But nevertheless he was rather satisfied with what he had found. After all everything that was essential was still in good condition and could be fixed easily if it even had to be fixed.

Laughing he ran around the hill and joined the slightly disoriented children. After a quick talk everyone agreed to return to their parents and get back to helping them. Slowly the long line of children trotted out of the forest, through the orchards and to the fields where they spend the rest of the day playing, eating the food provided by the peacekeepers, which allowed the workers to stay on the field for the whole day without the need of going home to cook and eat, as well as helping the a.d.u.l.ts a bit with plucking ripe berries.