Listening to the description of the ruins narrated by Bishop gal III, Gawain gradually fell into contemplation.
Ancient facilities buried deep underground, distinctly different from the architectural style of the Gondor Empire, and incomprehensible ancient technology, storing "samples" related to deities... all these features gave him a strange feeling of familiarity.
The hints revealed by gal imdiately confird this sense of familiarity for him.
"There’s another point," a deep voice ca from within the starlight polyr, "The ruins we discovered beneath Orlandeau seem to have so stylistic connection with those found by the Oblivion Association in the Sorin Region—they appear to be two facilities built by the sa civilization influenced by either different historical periods or different regional cultures. But as the ruins are too ancient and lack critical clues, we haven’t been able to determine their exact connection for many years, let alone decipher the ancient technology within the ruins..."
Gawain suddenly took a gentle breath: "It’s the heritage of the Inversion Tide..."
gal had clearly never heard of this term and instinctively asked: "Your Majesty? What did you say?"
"The ruins you discovered, and the underground palace in the Sorin Region found by the Oblivion Association, should all originate from an ancient civilization called the ’Inversion Tide.’ It was completely destroyed in the war with the dragons, and this empire had countless ties with the deities."
He thought of the "Ultimate To" handed to him by Beltira, which was a heritage from the Inversion Tide Empire. Its function was to forge keys, communicating with satellite databases on planetary orbits. Additionally, according to the clues provided by Beltira, there were rooms subjected to unspeakable forces of erosion and pollution, clearly related to the deities, in the depths of the collapsed area of the Sorin Underground Palace.
And now, new clues suggest that the underground at the old capital of the Typhon Empire, occupied by the Eternal Sleepers, is highly likely to be the second existing Inversion Tide ruins!
gal obviously hadn’t expected Gawain to unravel the mystery of the mysterious ruins so easily—the issue that had puzzled the Eternal Sleepers for centuries seed like common knowledge to Gawain, but he quickly rembered the true identity behind this seeming "human emperor," and his shock gradually faded.
Gawain did not continue discussing the Inversion Tide with gal—after all, what he knew was limited. He looked at gal, steering the topic back: "You also have so understanding of the underground palace occupied by the Oblivion Association?"
gal imdiately answered: "We have so cooperation with them, sharing so not-so-crucial information."
"Hmm," Gawain nodded, "So, back to the ancient ruins you discovered—what happened after that? At the ti, the Typhon Royal Family, ruling at Orlandeau, was kept in the dark?"
"The ruins were buried extrely deep, and the entrances to the surface were nearly all consud by earth and stones. Finding the entrance was pure luck for us—upon realizing it was an excellent hideout, we altered and concealed the entrance while transferring personnel and supplies into it, making it even harder to find. Over the years, we carefully hid ourselves and the underground facilities.
"The Eternal Sleepers is a group extrely adept at hiding themselves, and as you imagined, over hundreds of years... the Augustus Clan had no idea we were hiding right under their noses, nor did they know what kind of... secret was buried beneath their city.
"We are the shadows and symbionts under the city of Orlandeau. We rooted and developed together with that city, infiltrated many of its facilities, and in these ancient halls and corridors, we slowly recovered—the Order that had once been severely damaged gradually regained its strength. Initially, we only gathered in the relatively safe shallow layers of the ruins, sufficient for all our mbers at the ti, but as the Order slowly recovered, we decided to advance to deeper areas.
"We at least wanted to understand the appearance of our ’abode.’
"We soon explored the safe do area and the almost empty middle connecting corridors, eventually discovering... sothing still functioning in the deepest part of the ruins."
Gawain’s expression imdiately turned serious: "Sothing still functioning? What is it?"
"Allow to show you the scene I witnessed back then—"
gal spoke in a slow, low voice, and his amorphous body of starlight gradually dispersed, transforming into a mist. Through the faint haze, Gawain saw a holographic image (a Magic Illusion) quickly extract and replay from gal’s mory.
He saw a massive circular hall, surrounded by a vast ring-like structure ford of tal and crystals, with many black obelisk-like devices tilted and stationed inside the hall, their tips pointing toward the hall’s center. In the middle of the hall, he saw a brilliant object akin to an ocean of light, surging amidst a circle of ancient devices. It appeared like a viscous liquid, yet as it rose, it displayed a hazy, ethereal radiance, with sothing inside resembling starlight continually moving and flickering.
Gawain imdiately frowned: "What is this thing?"
gal’s voice ca from the surrounding dispersed mist: "A powerful energy containnt device, composed of astonishing magnetic fields, circulating arcane energy, and a series of elent stabilizers, of such an enormous scale that the entire hall and so corridors around it are its ’shell.’"
Then the forr Pope paused and added: "It took us nearly a century to figure out these rough ’functional components.’
"...At the center of the containnt field, are the remnants of the God of Dream Realms?" Gawain frowned, "Is this a prison device?"
"We once thought so... and that was one of our biggest mistakes," Bishop gal III said in a deep voice, "After discovering this area, we couldn’t understand its purpose. We only thought it was the ruin’s energy source, like a magic well in Mage towers. We carefully studied it, spending a century understanding its basic functions, yet found its technology couldn’t be replicated or utilized—of course, we didn’t dare to arbitrarily turn it off, as no one knew the consequences of doing so."
After many more years, we finally found so ways to control the energy flow, and during an attempt to adjust energy flow, a very small fissure opened in the center part of the containnt field—what had been sealed inside finally leaked a hint of its essence, and I was present at the scene.
"In that hint of aura, I sensed so terrifying and familiar ’voices’—"
gal’s voice suddenly had a trace of tremor and hesitation, as if that terrible feeling still haunted his now transford body and mind. But after a mont of composure, he steadied his tone and continued:
"I sensed the breath of the gods.
"An astonishing truth shocked all of us—the thing ’imprisoned’ within the confinent field is not any other entity, but the god we once worshipped and revered, or rather, a part of the god...
"It is a fragnt of the God of Dream Realms. We do not know where it ca from, nor what kind of power could slice a fragnt off a god’s ’body’, nor how many years it has been imprisoned in that device. We only know one thing—that terrifying, brink-of-insanity god, destined to engulf the whole world, can indeed be hard and confined.
"After the Ancestral Peak incident, everyone was enveloped in a long-lasting despair, for the power of gods was so mighty that mortals could not possibly contend with it. At the sa ti, this power was on an unstoppable, gradually maddening path, like a doomsday countdown, irrevocable. Yet the device we discovered underground gave us a ray of hope—it was a god’s fragnt! A fragnt confined by the device, one that could be studied!
"After overcoming great fear, we... began to study that thing.
"The powerful force of the confinent field can shield against the ntal pollution of the gods, making our research feasible, but it was also the properties of the confinent field that led us to make terrifying, erroneous judgnts—we mistakenly thought the entire underground facility was a prison, mistaken that the confinent device was ant to trap gods..."
Just as Gawain was about to ask, Amber couldn’t help but break the silence: "Isn’t it?"
"Of course not, that thing... is actually an altar.
"An altar ant to welco the god, converse with the god, provide a temporary vessel for the god—the so-called vessel is the confinent field in the hall.
"The god’s will ’descends’ in the form of ’fragnts’ at the center of that confinent field, like an out-of-body eye. The God of Dream Realms observes the world through that eye, while we, under its watchful gaze, have been busy for hundreds of years."
Amber gasped: "...Oh my..."
Even Gawain felt a chill creep up his spine. He could entirely imagine what a terrifying truth it was, to the extent that gal III’s voice trembled when ntioning related matters.
"Everything you did was watched by the God of Dream Realms?" His tone was particularly serious, his brows furrowing as he looked at the now-reford gal.
"Ironically fortunate—the ’Eye of the God’ within the device is not in real-ti connection with the god’s true body," gal said with a complex tone. "The ’Eye of the God’ in the device functions more like a segregated avatar, collecting information in the real world. Once it reaches a certain level, the core polarity of the confinent device would reverse, releasing the fragnt back to the Divine Realm. Only then would the God of Dream Realms learn what the ’eye’ had seen. But the confinent device we found might be too ancient, or perhaps so functions got stuck due to damage—it never released the ’Eye of the God’ from the energy field center.
"In a sense, the malfunctioning device is practically a real prison... yet unlike a true prison, the ’prisoner’ inside is theoretically the owner of the prison, and the prison door... could open at any ti due to system self-repair.
"You can imagine how dreadful this is for us."
"I can imagine," Gawain nodded gently, "but I’m curious, how did you discover this truth? Was there an instruction manual placed beside the ancient device?"
gal was silent for a mont, the starlight polyr slowly pulsing: "...Your Majesty, do you know how I ended up like this?"
Gawain raised an eyebrow: "Wasn’t it to extend your life, by transforming your life form?"
"At that ti, I had already used the technology provided by the Oblivion Association to extend my life, and I could have lived for several more centuries," gal’s voice carried a sigh. "What turned into this was an experintal accident.
"Due to an error in manipulating the energy flow, I was struck by a ray emitted from the confinent field. The ray destroyed my body, but the powerful energy of the confinent field trapped my soul. I got caught in those streaming energies and... slightly touched the ’Eye of the God’ bound at the core."
Gawain understood: "The knowledge of the gods has a coercive infusion trait—you ’saw’ the truth of the device from the fragnt of the God of Dream Realms?"
"Yes," gal III confird Gawain’s guess. "The mont I touched the ’Eye of the God’, I learned about the truth of the device, and the dire consequences if the ’Eye of the God’ were released back to the Divine Realm—all our secrets would be laid bare before the god, and the god would never permit such a rebellious act.
"Luckily, I ’survived’ that terrible accident because my brethren from the evil-cult operated promptly. My soul was released before being completely obliterated, but it also underwent severe distortion and mutation—from that day on, I beca like this.
"But compared to the truth of the Eye of the God, the mutation of the soul is negligible. We must resolve the hidden threat of the Eye of the God, either by utterly destroying it or permanently severing its connection with the Divine Realm, ensuring it could never return to the God of Dream Realms."
User Comments
0 comments from readers