Soon, Gawain, led by Byron, arrived at the exploration frontier of the ruins of the Dark Mountains.
This place is already located near the middle level of the ruins. It is the result of several days of hard work by the exploration team led by Byron. It is connected to the upper area through a large staircase, and there is a wider space and High roof - It is not easy to build such an extraordinarily wide space in a mountain. Since its builder chose this scale, it only means that this area requires such a large space.
All corridors are elevated, as are all doors and rooms.
Gawain picked up a map and looked at the route on the map with the light of the magic crystal held by Hetty next to him - Knight Byron completed the mapping of the areas along the way very conscientiously. Many straight corridors and rooms can be clearly seen, and some of the rooms or corridor branches are marked with special marks to indicate that there are unknown objects or suspicious branches inside. Obviously, even after exploring for several days, Byron Knight and his party were unable to understand the scale of this astonishingly huge ruins.
How insane is the scale of this thing?
Now Gawain, Hetty, Amber, Byron and a large group of soldiers have arrived in that special room. Byron pointed to the gate and control mechanism that had been cleared in front: "Sir, our The discovery was purely a fluke. This door was originally sealed, but it was probably due to disrepair and there was a gap, and the air flow was discovered by us. The control device next to it must have been broken, and its identification function has failed. Anyone can do it. Activate it."
"The creations of the Gondor Empire can't survive a thousand years..." Gawain sighed softly, "Demonstrate it and let me see."
Bye. Lun nodded, took off his gloves and stepped forward, placing his hand on the metal device. A distorted voice came from the device: "Testing... sample tester... stable period... allowed to pass. The isolation door is being opened. ..."
Amidst the creaking sound of mechanical operation, the ancient isolation door embedded in the wall slowly opened.
"As long as this is done, the door will open, and then regardless of whether anyone comes in or out, the door will close by itself within 5 minutes, or if you tap the pillar twice in a row, the door will also close. In addition, in the passage There's the same thing on the other side," Byron explained in detail.
Subsequently, two more soldiers came forward. Sure enough, a similar sound sounded from the device, indicating that the isolation door had been opened.
It seems to identify anyone who touches the device as a so-called stable sample tester, making the identity verification useless.
But Gawain couldn't help but frown: he thought deeply about the words "sample tester" mentioned in the device.
“This thing can actually talk!” Amber became interested in the device itself. She ran over and put her hand on the top of the metal pillar in the same manner, and said enthusiastically, "I've heard that elves and wizards also makeA talking golem, but I've never..."
"Detection... Warning, disqualification, non-identifiable target, channel closed, alarm activated. "
With this stiff and cold voice, the isolation door quickly closed again amidst a huge noise, leaving only Amber standing next to the device with a hooded face: "Hey...I Didn't do anything? ! ”
Gawain put his hand on the hilt of the Pioneer Sword the moment the so-called alarm activation words rang out, but after waiting for half a minute, he didn’t hear anything else. , he felt a little relieved: it seems that most of the functions in this facility have been shut down, and the door in front of him probably operates independently, and it will not really sound any alarm.
Byron, Hetty and others were also startled by this sudden change. They all drew their weapons and took stances as if facing a powerful enemy. It was not until it was confirmed that no ancient traps had been activated that Hetty breathed a sigh of relief and said He looked at the metal device in shock: "What's going on? Why does amber stop working when touched? "
"Don't worry about this for now," Gawain stepped forward and pulled Amber aside, and put his hand on the metal pillar. "Let's see if this thing can still be used first. "
As a result, the next second, the old access control device heard the sound of identity verification again, and the isolation door creaked open again.
"...This Do you want to show off your face at the door? Amber jumped up and down immediately, "Why is it okay for anyone to touch it, but it's just me who touches the door and it closes?" ! "
"I can probably guess what's going on..." Gawain frowned. From the several reactions of the door guard, he boldly inferred some facts, "I'm afraid this verification device is not Not broken. "
Hubo looked unbelieving: "It's not broken? Why can anyone open it if it's not broken? "
"The security setting of this door may not be as high as I thought at first. Its function is only to ensure that those who pass through the door are 'normal people'," Gawain said with a frown, " Do you still remember what Nicholas Egg once said? There has been research suspected of human experimentation in this facility, so the 'sample testers' mentioned by the access control are most likely referring to living people, and the so-called 'stable period'...mostly means that there are no mutations or other out-of-control situations. mean. In other words, as long as they are normal ordinary people, they can pass through this door. "
"Then why can't I? Amber stared, "I'm quite normal!" "
Gawain looked this guy up and down: "Are you a normal human being? Not to mention normal, are you human? "
Amber's pointed ears twitched: "...Okay, that makes sense. ”
Others also nodded thoughtfully. It seemed that Gawain’s explanation was recognized by everyone. However, Gawain himself fell into deep doubts after he finished speaking. .
Is the situation really that simple? Is this door just to prevent out-of-control test subjects from escaping?
No?For some reason, after he heard the harsh, cold voice of the access control system, he couldn't help but feel an extremely weak but real sense of disgust and resistance in his heart. However, when he searched his memory, he couldn't find this feeling at all. Sources of negative emotions.
But no matter what is behind this door, he must go in.
After confirming that Amber was unable to use the verification device at the door, and that she would not trigger any alarms if she followed others in, Gawain led the team into the space behind the door.
They passed through a corridor made of unknown metal materials. The metal pillars lined up on both sides of the corridor reminded Gawain of sterilization or static electricity removal devices, and at the end of the corridor was It is another open isolation door. Opposite the isolation door is an overall circular hall.
This hall is built with artificial materials. Although the white wall paint has been dusted and peeled off, it can still remind people of how bright and spacious this entire space was in the past. A circle around the hall, A large number of ancient magical devices can be seen arranged along the walls and connected by pipes or metal columns, and another part of the pipes extending from these devices all converge into the center of the hall: there are more than a dozen strange-shaped objects standing there.
They have metal bases, and on the base is a transparent tubular structure like a biological culture tank. A heavy top cover can be seen at the top of the tubular structure, and the top cover is engraved with symbols. Wen and magic circle, but all the runes have been extinguished.
The scene in front of him, which was unclear whether it was magic or science fiction, made Gawain slightly dazed, but the scenes in Gawain Cecil's memory about the glorious period of the Gondor Empire quickly weakened in his mind. sense of dissonance.
Looking at these neatly arranged devices in front of him, Gawain could almost imagine the scene when these containers were once filled with biomass solvents and soaked in test subjects one by one - and around these containers, there were busy people. The imperial magisters were busy walking around. They recorded various parameters of the samples in the containers, and used spells to stimulate the samples inside from time to time. They dealt with the same race as them in the containers with an almost inhuman cold attitude. "test subject".
Human experimentation was not a rare thing in the Gondor Empire back then, and it is even less rare in the Anzu Kingdom today.
"It's incredible..." Hetty looked at those mysterious ancient magic devices with an almost intoxicated expression. She was amazed by the neatly arranged runes and fine metal structures, "It's so complicated. The combination of runes... such a tight assembly... such neat and uniform parts... how did they do it?"
"These runes are made with the help of the endless energy of the Deep Blue Well, regardless of the matter. It was created by consuming a lot of experimental data, and these parts..." Gawain looked at the magic devices that already had some prototypes of industrial products, and sighed softly, "They require thousands of skilled craftsmen and twenty kinds of The above basic workshops require a complete set ofComplex production processes and thousands of standard parameters, as well as the technical system supported by the entire empire. ”
Hetty was a little distracted for a moment: “…Have we actually left behind such advanced technologies…were we really unable to preserve them back then?” ”
Gao Wen sighed: “The first generation of pioneers in Ansu tried hard to restore these things in their lifetime. However, the data we rescued were not enough to restore even half of them. The industrial chain was broken. Helping a semi-illiterate who ran away from the borderland to study blueprints for ten years would hardly make up for one of them, not to mention that the conditions at the time simply did not allow anyone to go off-duty and engage in research - the first generation had to do 90% of the work. Only by devoting energy to production work can we ensure that the number of people who starve to death in that year will not exceed the number of new births..."
Speaking of this, he shook his head: "But compared with these, the more important reason is We have lost the Deep Blue Well - the huge pure energy provided by the Deep Blue Well has greatly reduced the operating requirements of many magical devices, and the same device may not operate at all if placed in other magical environments. The most basic and simple things are easy to say, but the more complex and advanced the things, the more completely they will be scrapped after leaving the Deep Blue Well. "
After listening to Gawain's words, Amber suddenly felt a little touched: "Is that why you value versatility and applicability so much? "
"The industrialization of magic supported by the Deep Blue Well cannot be considered real industrialization," Gawain casually said something that everyone present might not understand, and then looked around with a smile, "Compared to To start with this, let’s first take a look at how many surprises this ancient testing ground has left for us. "
His eyes swept over the thousand-year-old culture containers, control consoles, magic bases and sensors, and finally landed on a nearby wall. His eyes couldn't help but tremble. Ning.
There is a huge line of text written in ancient human common language:
Humanity will last forever - even if it disobeys the gods.