As his primary destination, after his successful escape from the Athahe homestead, he set out to explore the abandoned, temple-like structures, where he hoped to find Rocky surviving and struggling somewhere around there.
He was aware, after all, of the tendencies of his old friend, whom he consciously remembered having since they were still pups in training.

“…Follow… smelling posts… categorize, memorize… search… compose… circles!… Deep down there’s a bouncer… under tension… if you search well for it… you may… find it… find me… find each other!”

Just before parting ways then, Ro managed to send him scents about his love for some temples, somewhere, and for what might be happening there, scents he received from some common’s fem trainer. He loved knowledge and teachers, and the purpose of his life, from a very young age, was clear in acquiring them.

Chocky imagines that for Ro, this is the main reason to escape from the common’s training school, to go towards the temples, expectedly desperate. No one seemed willing to adopt him with all he knew, still he wanted to smell more.

For a journey that lasts quite some Firsts, during which there are no shortages of detours, in different worlds with rare sights and live-played music, the advice Ro had given him altruistically sounds like coming from the darkest black hole one can find to store memories.

He assumes that if Ro needed patience, study, planning, and execution, for him only his apparent luck is enough to find the right path for him.
However, he was able to find his destination thanks to his training, in a way that reveals similar to his friend’s, remarkably accurate and thorough, stereometric smelling calculations. The rest, he thought, would come as he progressed.

Searching to find, suddenly he will see the few Thirds of distance separating him from the temples dwindling. He crosses the last bridge and, through a side entrance into the dome, he reaches something half-ruined and half-abandoned buildings, wooden and tiled architectural structures, organized as in a wild version of chaotic homeostasis.

At first, as much time and effort as it took him to reach the ruined temples, he quickly forgets them, as the sight is narcotic. The temple complex still stands, in red and blue shades, intermediated by all shades of green. Who knows how long the old dome has resisted the black of space, proudly self-sustaining. It still provides all the necessary conditions for achieving homeostasis to maintain conditions for life within it, while ideally recycling the environmental needs for hydration and lubrication of the surrounding lush jungle environment.

Cho explores cautiously, but as carefree as possible, after bypassing the chilling sign he encountered at the entrance.

It wrote something like “I worship the one god who forbids sacrifices, Immolate to the one who forbids rituals.”

He enters the interior of the central red and blue building and finds the temple empty, but the fire in the central hearth burns quietly betraying the absence of a specific presence.

“…Maybe… these are the first complete moments of freedom in my life… The only problematic thing around here… is the small life of this last flame… sprouting from the stone hearth,… ha…ha,” which of course manages to burn the last wooden support that held the stone and the entire structure collapses in front of his eyes, before he can even think about rekindling it.

“If something is to blame for this, maybe it’s that I still have my eyes open. I’m sleepy and have no reflexes. After so much road and adventure, let me enjoy my newfound freedom with closed eyes for a while. That will help while waiting for Ro, I’m sure he’ll come back from somewhere here.”

Sitting aside the extinguished and jumbled fire, he feels like he’s dreaming freely for the first time.