From what Matt had gathered in his conversation with Ramsen, the cool "listening facility" name had very little to do with traditional cloak-and-dagger spy stuff. Instead, their job was much closer to something like a meteorologist, someone who gathered a bunch of incoming data, looked for trends, and tried to make predictions of the future with what they had learned. Nerds, in other words, but nerds who had been the brains behind the entire defense of Gaia. They had weaponized observation to keep their planet competitive with a quickly evolving threat for much, much longer than would have otherwise been possible.

　　If nothing else, it seemed that even world-class scientist types on Gaia had the same kind of habits and thinking as the few engineers Matt had known on Earth. The door to the facility was small and nondescript, with its fanciest aspect appearing to be the authority-reading keypad that all Gaian security features seemed to run on. Judging by just the exterior of the building, there was no indication that the living, breathing brain of the Gaian resistance had set up shop here. It looked like a bigger version of the bunker that Matt had found.

　　As the door hissed open, the exacting, nondescript decorating style continued. The space that Matt was looking at could have been a normal office space back on Earth. There were cubicles. There were screens of various kinds, seats that were recognizably office chairs, and uncountable writing implements. It was a little different once you took into account the big, central screen that dominated one side of the room, but even that wasn`t unheard of in certain kinds of offices on Earth. Overall, the facility was almost completely normal.

　　Except for all the corpses.The room was packed with them, dozens and dozens of remarkably well-preserved mummies, wearing what Matt had come to consider to be standard Gaian garb and sitting in seats or slumped over together in circles on the ground. Some were hugging.

　　"Matt? How? How could this even happen? It looks like they knew what was coming, but it couldn`t have been the Scourge. It looks like something got them suddenly, but what?"

　　"No idea. What`s weirder to me isn`t that."

　　"It isn`t the massive amount of corpses?"

　　"No, it is. It`s just not that part of it." Matt walked up to one of the corpses, which was still holding some kind of pencil in its hand. "Even in this building, they should have decayed. The food cubes only held up because they were hermetically sealed and enchanted at the same time, and even most of those didn`t make it. Why are they still here?"

　　Examining the bodies gave them little else to go on. There were no wounds, no evidence they had tried to dodge or run. They had just died.

　　"Matt, this one has a note!" Lucy shouted.

　　Matt ran over and noticed that one had written out a note on some kind of foil that had, somehow, survived the intervening centuries. He read it at an awkward angle, afraid it would fall apart if he moved it.

　　Tiala. I`m sorry I won`t be coming home, and I`m sorry you couldn`t be here with me. Neither are safe. It looks like time is short for all of us, but I`m leaving this in hopes that, against all odds, you will escape danger and find it. I pray that you do.

　　I have read and studied. I have created new kinds of math and helped others expand new realms of science. I have given everything I could from my life, even the sacrifice of being away from you, to fight the Scourge. Now they have asked for my death, and I give it willingly. I would give it even if it meant only a few more seconds of life for you, and the barest chance that you would survive.

　　A week ago, a messenger from the scientists in armaments development made it through to our building. Letting him in was the last time we were brave enough to open the door. He is with us still. But with him he brought a kind of poison, not for the Scourge but for us. He tells us it will work its way through our systems as it ends us, changing us into a rather unpleasant surprise for the Scourge if it tries to consume us.

　　I doubt it will work. Nothing has. But maybe the poison will hurt it. They tell me it does not think, but I will pretend it does and hope the poison causes it agony, I hope it feels pain, the same one I feel knowing I can`t protect you. It may not be able to pry open these doors, and our deaths may be in vain. But I hope they count for something. With all I have given to the fight, my body and my last few hours are little enough to add. If it does not get to us and you survive, as I pray you will, bury me somewhere with flowers. What would harm the Scourge, the messenger tells us, would not harm other plants. I would give much to know I had, even in death, helped restore some amount of the beauty that this world has lost.

　　I have never hated anything before, but I hate the Scourge now.

　　And I have never loved anything as I love you.

　　I die your husband. It is not nothing. Goodbye.

　　Matt and Lucy didn`t pretend not to cry. It took a while.

　　—

　　Once they moved on, they went to the screen that covered one side of the room. It seemed to be controlled by something like a plinth, a sort of non-dungeon-related panel set on a metal pillar. Matt had barely touched it before the screen roared to life, somehow as active and dustless as if it had just been powered down a few moments ago. In a moment, the screen was displaying a dashboard, most of which Matt didn`t understand. Most of the boxes were now displaying the Gaian equivalent of "N/A". It didn`t seem useful.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

　　"Hello, Reincarnator." A voice boomed out. "It is not important who I am as an individual. There was a time when I would have been proud of my name and my accomplishments. Now, I am proud only to have been part of the group that worked here. It is enough that you know me as one of their number."

　　Matt stood up a little straighter, hanging on every word.

　　"There is data here, but none that you are likely to understand. It is no shame that you can`t. There is much here even we do not understand, and it is our work. Here is what you should know. We can only hope it helps you and that the Scourge does not change too much before you arrive. We have given everything. We pray it is useful to you. Good luck. Fight the Scourge."

　　The data on the screen resolved to a much smaller, much more manageable screen of facts about how the Scourge had grown and evolved over time. It had changed with a process very much like super-charged evolution, one where it pushed as many different variations of itself as possible, but with no centralization. In different regions of Gaia, the Scourge strains varied in terms of its resistances to damage, growth rate, and the kinds of nourishment it required.

　　Later, the screen claimed, the Scourge centralized. One strain managed to attain a form where beneficial variations were identified and shared among different strains. Within a shockingly short amount of time, the entire Scourge population evolved into one plant interlocked by a form of biological data-sharing. Far in territory it controlled, the process of its adaptation was controlled by one central hub, a literal buried limb that the scientists called the taproot.

　　With this coordination came a weakness. The Scourge evolved to be dependent on the root, to the point where the scientists hypothesized that destroying the root itself would destroy or badly injure the entire plant. But because the root was well protected and kept away from even the slightest hint of danger, the Gaians couldn`t do much with that information.

　　Eventually, that weakness disappeared. The Scourge de-centralized its centralization by creating redundant taproots. Unless they could all be killed at once, there was no chance of killing the entire plant outside of starving it entirely.

　　There was other data, mostly feeds of how effective various weaponry was. The Scourge adapted quickly to various kinds of attack, but not absolutely, and it wasn`t immune to damage even once it had adapted defenses. Its strength, the screen said, was in biomass and the sheer devastation its ability to drain mana could cause on nearly any kind of life or material. It wasn`t invincible.

　　"It`s only one plant right now, Matt. We have a chance."

　　Matt nodded. "We do. Not a great chance, but a chance. We know where to hit it, at least."

　　"We need to hurry."

　　Matt agreed. There was little beyond the data to do here, at least for now. Sealing the door carefully, they moved on.

　　—

　　The rest of the day was dungeons. They rushed them. Matt took damage, but survived. His stats climbed wildly compared to his previous growth, but not to any insane levels. Every bit helped, but it was clear to both him and Lucy that the important factor in play was his Palate of The Conqueror. They ran through known dungeons, killing and eating anything they could.

　　After only a few more dungeons, it leveled up.

　　Palate of The Conqueror LV2

　　At level 2, Palate of The Conqueror can buffer another unused meta trait adaptation and can "draw" that stored meta trait from a filled slot. Each trait can only be stored once.

　　The ability to store another monster-derived ability was great, since it effectively gave Matt a better chance of dealing with whatever adaptive tricks the Scourge might be hiding. But more important by far was the advantage it gave them in terms of time. Not every meta trait was useful. Most weren`t, in fact. But the fact that they could now bank them would mean less repetitions of dungeons to retrieve valuable traits lost while checking other traits out.

　　Each trait that did work out, on the other hand, meant they could deal with dungeons faster and more easily.

　　"I can`t believe you actually ate that thing."

　　"The bat? Lucy, you`ve been making fun of me for not eating it for weeks."

　　"Well, yeah, because you hadn`t then. And it was fun. But that doesn`t mean it wasn`t gross, Matt. Those bats were actually really disgusting."

　　Matt couldn`t disagree. He could feel the enamel dissolving off his teeth as he ate a slice of the bat, and it burned like fire in his stomach before his VIT got a lead on it and it finally calmed down.

　　Acidic Physiology

　　Your muscles, skin, and organs produce a strong acid. The actual PH of the acid scales with your VIT, which is good because while your body can produce the acid just as well as the bats could, it isn`t set up to actually handle it. You have also obtained the ability to melt things with a touch at the cost of a slow but steady drain to your HP that will eventually kill you.

　　Meta-trait occupied: Defense

　　Matt shuffled traits, abandoning his less-useful-in-a-Leel-less-environment wormskin to wear the bone plate trait and store the acidic physiology for later. It was absolutely gross to even think about being more like the bats than he had to, but he had plans for it, and he hoped it would prove useful.