This time, it’s really time to leave.
Gawain glanced at the tea snacks and drinks placed on the round table in front of him, and said with a sincere smile: "I think I will miss this cup of 'reflection' - this is what I am doing One of the best experiences in Tallond."
The Dragon God took a deep look at Gawain: "It seems... it's a taste you haven't tasted since you came to this world. ”
“I have tried to get people to make similar things, but in the end I failed.” Gawain smiled. Only in front of this god who knows many things, he can feel confident and bold. Talking about these things, he glanced at the oak cup on the table again, with a regretful expression on his face, "Unfortunately, things like reflection... cannot be reproduced with human hands after all."
The Dragon God was a little curious: "...Do wanderers from outside the territory also miss home?"
"Occasionally - although I can't remember what my hometown looks like."
......
"My lord, they have left Tallond."
Heragor, who went to see off his guests, returned to the upper temple. In the hall, he came to the Dragon God Enya who was still standing quietly in the center of the hall, lowered his hands and said respectfully.
"I understand," the Dragon God glanced at Heragor lightly, "Then you can go and have a rest - I don't need to serve you here for the time being."
Helagor Lagor slightly raised his head and glanced at the god, lowered his head and accepted the order: "...Yes."
But after receiving the order, the high-level dragon priest did not leave immediately, but seemed to have something to think about. Saiban stood there, looking a little hesitant.
"Tell me," the Dragon God said calmly, "What do you want to ask?"
"You look worried and tired," Herago lowered his head and said , "Is it because of the last issue we discussed with that human?"
"...Let's just say it is," the Dragon God said lightly, "Maybe...I'm a little envious of them."
Heragor raised his head: "Envy?"
"Envy that they haven't gone too far yet, so they still have the opportunity to choose and try and make mistakes," the Dragon God looked at quietly. Herago's eyes, "I also envy them for being so young and still having courage and vigor."
The hall became quite quiet, and Herago seemed to be able to hear the powerful beating of his heart. Sound - that is a healthy, vital primitive heart, not a complex bionic pump intertwined with metal and polymer.
The master and the servant stood facing each other like this, and time seemed to have stagnated in this temple.
......
Those special guests left, and they stirred up a little bit of small waves in the eternal and calm water pool of Tallond, but these waves followed He immediately calmed down as they left. In the operation of the huge, precise, and cold machine of the Dragon Kingdom, the small ripples caused by outsiders have not been able to do much to this society.Little change - the ripples only turned into a few pieces of news, a few interpretation stories, a few discussions on the Internet, a few short-lived hot spots, and then were drowned by the vast torrent of entertainment and useless information in the Omega Network, and became Without a trace.
The upper-class citizens continue to do their busy but meaningless work, while the lower-class citizens continue to indulge in the arena and neurological entertainment under the dual effects of enhancers and hallucinogens.
Perhaps only Omega's database will faithfully record this little "footnote" as always.
Deep in the western side of the continent, in a giant mine near the coast, orderly automatic machines are busy shuttling, and transport trains are constantly speeding through the complex spider web-like mine tunnels. Management The robots are busy among a large number of warehouses and isolation rooms, and in the shelves or containers they transport and inspect, most of them contain metal fragments that emit strange starlight, or are broken and twisted, with no original appearance. The remains of crystals.
This is one of the main warehouses of the Mithril Treasure House and one of the warehouses with the highest security level. What is stored here...are all "special collections" with a custody level of ten or above.
The relics of those who set sail, the forbidden items of the Empire against the Tide, or the stubborn remains left by ancient gods that have endured several demonic tides and still refuse to dissipate.
This is the result that the dragons have continuously recovered from the outside world for more than a million years - in a sense, it is said in the human world that dragons all like gold, silver, wealth, and love to collect rare treasures. It is also inseparable from this kind of collecting behavior.
This tight treasure house transformed from a mine basically does not have many dragons as guards - the fleet controlled by Omega controls everything here. Fighting machines are more reliable than dragons and are more efficient in responding to Omega's commands. In fact, in storage facilities above level seven, there is basically no problem with ordinary dragons.
Furthermore, this warehouse also stores a large number of things related to the voyagers - although the Great Temple requires the dragons active outside to collect the legacy of the voyagers as much as possible, the gods also have prohibitions, and the dragons are not allowed to Unauthorized use of those relics with special powers. Under this special order, it is even less likely that there will be many dragons stationed in this facility.
At the core of the mine, a huge shaft extends straight down to the deepest part of the earth.
This shaft and its contents are hidden in the safest and deepest place on the continent, but even so, it is still surrounded by more than ten layers of high-strength alloy armor and countless layers of armor. Defenses guard its innermost.
A large number of pipes, cables, and guide rails go down the shaft. They pass through layers of protection and finally connect to a vast underground space. This underground space is supported by huge metal beams that are hundreds of meters high, and is reinforced with layers of alloy linings and polymer domes. It is a star-shaped hall, almost the same size as the jury's headquarters hall.
In every corner of the star-shaped hall, you can see a deep and long tunnel leading in a certain direction, which makes it seem like a hub of some kind of underground transportation network extending in all directions, and there are shimmering tracks from there. Those tunnels extend deep into the center of the hall, and where all the tracks meet, in the very center of the hall, a huge, heavy, humming device can be seen running.
It is shaped like a silver-white dome, which is vertically fixed in a series of brackets, pipes and cables. Its long axis reaches more than ten meters. , amidst the constant buzzing, it seems that there is some kind of life inside.
There are many pillars scattered around the dome, and various complex data interfaces or monitoring views appear on the surfaces of those pillars, showing that this hall is in a state of chaos every minute. In the midst of busy data exchange.
However, no dragon will supervise the operation of this hall, and no dragon will read the data presented on the interface - these devices are all remnants of ancient designs, and the machines are still They were not eliminated for efficiency reasons, perhaps just to maintain a certain "tradition" that only the machines themselves cared about.
Here, only the machine monitors itself.
In the low, seemingly eternal buzzing sound, a stream of light appeared on the surface of the dome again, and on a pillar connected to it, the surface of a crystal interface suddenly began to glow with light. White text.
"Confirm that the visitor has left the scope of Tallond, the observation thread ends, and the data enters the closing and archiving process."
The cursor at the end of the text flashes, as if thinking and hesitating , but soon, the text continued to be refreshed line by line——
"What is the meaning of life——
" Archived Gawain Cecil's answer, answer Number: 177, filing completed.
"Comparative analysis with the previous 176 answers.
"There is still no clear result, and the answers given by humans or other intelligent creatures are still ambiguous and full of contradictions.
"Still not sure whether this problem is really unsolvable."
The bright white text on the interface stopped refreshing, and then dimmed a little as the cursor flickered, and the machine's The thinking seemed to be over, and the normal data returned to the center of the interface.
However, only a moment later, a new thread was suddenly started, and on the surface of another nearby pillar, a continuous stream of text was quickly refreshed——
" Based on the answer No. 177, a new question is derived:
"Does Omega have 'life'?
"Try to define 'life'...try to expand the definition...try to expand the definition again...
"Conclusion: If a dragon whose body is made up of 90% machines is 'life' ', then Omega can also be 'life'.
“Omega can be ‘life’. ”
The machines were running quietly.
A batch of biomass waste from the extreme arena that should have been sent to the biochemical treatment center for recycling or waste was intercepted and loaded into A new container was put into it, and it was put on a transport train, heading for an automatic factory deep in the earth.
A batch of metal scraps that were not in the processing catalog were put into a furnace deep in the earth, ready to be made into new ones.
A production sequence was secretly started, and the machines were busy working.
Today, Tallond is still calm.
… …
Winter has come, and it seems to be colder than in previous years.
The cold wind is blowing the flags on the head of Winter Wolf Castle, and the strong fabrics are curling in the wind. With the sound of beating, a group of black-armored soldiers lined up in the open ground under the city wall, and the uniform tapping of military boots hit the cold morning.
Andesa stood at Winter Wolf Castle. On the towering city wall, watching the soldiers of the Knights perform their duties, their tense faces relaxed slightly.
"The Knights of the Iron River filled the vacancy left by the God of War priests. This is indeed of great benefit to the current Winter Wolf Castle." The young wolf general turned his head and looked at the tall black-haired middle-aged man standing next to him, "I am grateful for this, Earl Moglock. "
"It is the duty of a knight to obey orders," the leader of the Iron River Knights, the high-ranking knight Count Moglock, said with a solemn expression, "What's more, Archduke Ferdinand once told me that I am very I'm glad I can help Winter Wolf Castle this time. ”
As he spoke, this senior aristocratic officer who commanded one of the strongest legions of extraordinary beings in the empire couldn’t help but glance at the sentry towers and walls in the distance, with a trace of worry on his face. His expression: "I heard that a priest who was on vacation died mysteriously last night, and two deacons who lived nearby went crazy in their sleep... Is this true? "
"It seems that it has reached your ears," Andesa couldn't help but sigh, "The situation is indeed the same as what you said, no... maybe it is more sensational. The priest who died mysteriously almost turned into a monster and self-destructed in front of a guard on duty - the battle mage responsible for patrolling the priest's rest area heard the noise and went to check and saw the priest's flesh and blood twisted and deformed. , being digested and dissolved by blood and some kind of smoke, I was almost scared to death. As for the two crazy acolytes - after analysis, experts in theology and spiritual magic initially suspected that they were 'contaminated' because they heard the strange screams of the mutated priests before they died, and their spirits mutated accordingly. "
Earl Moglock's face darkened.
"... Appalling. "He said in a deep voice.
"If you hadn't seen it with your own eyes, ordinary people wouldn't be able to imagine what a weird and terrifying scene it was." Andesa nodded, "The information coming from the imperial capital is accurate. , some kind of 'pollution' based on faith connections is being made among the priests of the God of War.Spreading on a medium to large scale, this is a plague on the soul level. Although I don't want to say such rebellious words - it is obvious that the gods they believe in cannot protect them from this plague. "
Morglock's face twitched, and a wry smile appeared at the corner of his mouth: "There are even sayings that the gods themselves are the source of the plague..."
Andersa was silent for a few seconds. , couldn't help but look at the commander of the Knights beside him: "Count Moglock, as far as I know... you are also a believer in the God of War, so this situation must be very difficult for you. "
"Don't worry, before that I was first and foremost a soldier of the empire," Count Moglock said with a serious expression. "Indeed, it is inevitable for soldiers to be influenced by the belief in the God of War. Among our soldiers More than two-thirds of the knights are believers of the God of War, including light believers and devout believers. Half of the knights have been baptized by the Church of the God of War, but we still stand firmly here - indeed, as you said, this is not It’s not easy, but I think our loyal knights and soldiers did not come to this cold and far away border area just for ease. ”
“This is admirable. "Andesa said seriously.
Another gust of cold wind blew and rolled up her gray hair on the temples.
The young General Wolf took out his mechanical watch and looked at it. After taking a look at the time, he said to Count Moglock: "Let me take my leave first - I should go and preside over this morning's meeting. "
Earl Moglock smiled and nodded: "Please, General Andesa. ”
Andesa Wendell left the city wall with valiant and powerful steps. On the high wall with the cold wind, only Morglock stood quietly.
The Earl turned his head and glanced in the direction Andersa left, and saw that the young Wolf General had rounded a corner and disappeared at the end of the stairs leading to the castle area. He smiled and turned to look again. In another direction, Malm Dunit was standing next to him, with a gentle and loving smile on his face.