"Hey, maybe this isn't how they made the ones you use," Aoi reassured Akane. "This is, like, a prototype. Doesn't mean it's how it actually happened."

He shrugged. People had been trying to perfect robots for decades. Didn't mean that just because they found an android somewhere that real humans didn't exist. Robots couldn't think, just respond the way they'd been programmed. He didn't think the Eidolons were secretly robots.

"And, yeah, people worship Eidolons. They've been doin' it for thousands of years. That doesn't just spring outta nowhere. We gotta figure out if the Ancients made the Proto-Eidolon based on somethin' they found here on Crystallis, or if they built these fake ones to make way for creatin' the real ones, and people started worshippin' 'em after."

The name 'Proto-Eidolon' suggested it came first, but at the same time, they wouldn't know to call it 'proto' unless they knew an 'Eidolon' would come after. So the whole thing had been named retrospectively and who the hell trusted the Ancients anyways? Anybody who made a sketchy lab on the moon was bound to be off their rocker.