Sword of Dawn

Page 252

Banner reminded: "However, the magic skills of elves and humans are very different, and the rune structure is also very different-this is the reason why almost all the technology of the Sentinel Tower was in the hands of the Silver Empire back then, not because we were unwilling to announce it. , but even if human beings come into contact with the runes of elves, they can only do limited imitation, you should be clear about this."

"Of course, I know, I just want to see," Gao Wen said with a smile, "and we have made good progress in the field of runes. Although humans are still unable to release the spells of elves, we have more or less mastered some runes. The translation method, the technology in this tower, has some reference value on our side."

"Then please go ahead," Banner nodded, "You were also one of the builders of these towers back then, and we have no reason to stop you. However, for the purpose of protecting the property of the Silver Empire and preventing excessive disclosure of technology, please do not draw any drawing."

"Thank you very much, that's enough - I just take a look and refer to your design ideas for some magical devices."

Gao Wen expressed his thanks, and then led the team to continue walking forward, but under his calm face, there was a trace of excitement hidden in his heart.

This is the highest technological crystallization of the Silver Empire, and everything here... is a treasure! !

Of course, he didn't lie about the reason for entering the tower - he really wanted to find out what went wrong with these sentinel towers, and this was also one of his goals and even missions in organizing this huge project. But apart from this formal reason, he was also interested in the elf technology in the Sentinel Tower.

After the fall of the Gondor Empire, these elves held the world's most advanced artificial intelligence technology, the most outstanding high-density rune technology, and the most powerful anti-gravity technology in their hands! !

Of course, due to the historical problems left over from the "Original Elves' Great Split", the elves themselves have many black boxes in these technologies that need to be solved, and all the magical skills of the elves have been almost incomprehensible to humans for a long time. I thought about the possibility of technical exchange, but...it doesn't matter.

Math will explain the power of each rune and their optimal placement.

Sonia and the elven magister named Banner walked quietly beside them. Gawain couldn't see too many emotional fluctuations on the faces of the two elves.

They didn't mind Gao Wen observing the core structure of the tower, and they didn't mind their technology falling into the hands of humans.

Is the reason just the friendship of all races working together to build the Sentinel Tower 700 years ago?Or out of their friendship with "Gauvan Cecil" himself?Or... They haven't realized that the Cecilians have actually fully mastered the technology of using rune logic to reorganize elf runes, and they haven't realized that humans have been able to completely control elf magic, not just imposing it on shells. A wind elemental blessing?

To be honest, Gawain was a little surprised that the other party agreed to his request so readily. He was even prepared to study secretly in the Sentinel Tower, but since the other party had agreed... then Gawain had no reason Miss such an opportunity.

Although Gawain Cecil was knowledgeable 700 years ago, he was more of a military general. He did not have a deep understanding of its technology when he built the Sentinel Tower. Human beings 700 years ago were experiencing a great recession. Moreover, they are still facing the gap of "foreign magic cannot understand". Although they have participated in the tower repair project, they have not been exposed to the latter's core technology, so today's opportunity is extremely precious.

The team continued to move towards the core area of ​​the base of the Sentinel Tower, and every time they advanced a certain distance, Sonia or Banner would ask the team to stop to check the operation of those key devices.

"This is the sensory center of the entire No. [-] 'spine'," Banner stopped again halfway through the corridor. He came to a gray-white square column with light gold patterns connecting the roof and the floor. Beside, he took out the tool and said, "All the sensing centers are connected together. In theory, no matter which one of the six 'ridges' has a problem, you should be able to see the problem in any of the sensing centers..."

While speaking, the magister had already removed a cover plate on the pillar. After the protective cover was removed, a large number of overlapping metal pieces like leaves, with complex magic runes engraved on the surface appeared to everyone. in front of you.

These metal pieces were piled up one upon another inside the pillar, and Banner reached out and waved his hand near the metal pieces, and some of the metal pieces immediately left their respective positions and flew into the air with a clatter.With a serious expression on Banner's face, he controlled these metal pieces to fly past his eyes one by one with telekinesis, and at the same time carefully observed their conditions. The metal pieces are infused with magic, sensing their movement.

"...All the sensor centers are functioning normally, and the sensors on the six 'ridges' are all intact," Banner said with a frown. "The signal from the side of the wasteland is also very clear."

Sophia asked from the side: "What about the communication with the demon's mind?"

"The communication is good, there is almost no delay, and the operation of the demon's mind seems to be normal," Banner said, returning the metal blades to their original positions with magic, and then raised his head to look at the end of the corridor, "The Sentinel Tower is ahead The control center of the pedestal is gone, maybe we should check its 'brain' directly."

Chapter 0583 Vision

Corridors and rooms that had been silent for seven centuries were revived.

As it got closer to the core control area of ​​the pedestal, the corridors inside the "ridge" became wider and wider, and more and more flickering runes and energy veins began to appear on the walls on both sides, with strong elves At the end of this wide corridor, all the internal passages of the "ridges" come together to form a six-pointed star-shaped radial hall, while a cylindrical The "chamber" is located in the center of the hall, surrounded by countless pipes, metal beams and runic pillars.

This is the control center of the Sentinel Tower, the place where the demon's mind is placed—in Gao Wen's view, it is the central computer room where the artificial intelligence is located.

The entrance to the computer room was tightly closed, and two beams of light slanting down from high altitude illuminated a small open space in front of the entrance. Amber raised her head, looked up along the outer wall of this cylindrical room, and saw its top floating There is a hazy light and shadow, and huge cloth curtains hang down from the light and shadow. Those cloth curtains depict the emblems of the Silver Empire and the human kingdoms, some of which have been severely decayed under the erosion of the years. Only tattered strips of cloth hang quietly in the sky, like... a shroud.

Amber blinked her eyes, and for a moment, she felt that she saw something from those curtains—some gray shadows, squirming, rolling, growing and rolling in those dark corners like mud, and Faint figures emerged from the growing shadows, spying on the uninvited guests who suddenly broke into the place.

However, in the next second, these things disappeared like hallucinations.

"What's wrong?" Gawain's voice woke Amber up from her stupor, "What are you staring at?"

"No... I must have misread it." Hu Po blinked and rubbed her eyes, "By the way, what's on it? It seems to be floating with a layer of cloud."

"That's the magic power cloud top, and the top of the cloud top is the outer space. The ceiling of the base is actually open, and the magic power focuser extracts powerful energy from the leylines and the magic power focus to create a powerful magic power cloud top in the open area of ​​the base. On the one hand, it supplies the 'stone tablet', and on the other hand, it maintains the protection system of the entire base," Banner, the elven magister, explained, "Once the cloud top is extinguished, the Sentinel Tower is also finished, so it has never stopped for seven centuries."

Amber let out a half-comprehension sound, and Banner came to the entrance of the cylindrical room, and injected magic power into the elven relief on the entrance again.

Fortunately, this time the gate wasn't jammed—he didn't have to pull out his elbow wrench.

The room where the demon's mind was placed opened, and the Iron Ranger soldiers led by Solderin guarded the entrance of the room, while Gawain stepped forward and walked into it with Amber.

A majestic blue floating light filled the cylindrical room, and Amber couldn't help exclaiming softly as soon as she entered the door—she saw that the entire floor of this room was made of the purest and most flawless obsidian, in the dark as night The surface of the obsidian is carved with extremely fine and complex rune patterns. Those runes exude a light blue shimmer, and complement each other with the blue crystals inlaid on the walls of the room. A one-meter black cube is quietly floating in the anti-gravity field.

There are straight blue lines on the surface of the black cube, and the overall material seems to be some kind of metal. Faint runes float on every plane separated by blue lines, which looks mysterious and mysterious.

It seemed that someone was approaching, and there was a pleasant sound in the cube, and then it turned, and the blue lines divided it into countless large and small squares. The method was reorganized, and a slightly dull synthesized voice sounded in the room: "Sensing the approach of the organism...recognizing...constructor authority, authorized visitor, commander...error, the commander authority is not logical, restart Authentication, Commander... wrong, the authority of the commander is not logical, re-authentication..."

The voice from the cube became more and more confused, and Gao Wen finally couldn't help coughing softly: "Ahem, I'm resurrected."

"...Voice certification, passed, magweave characteristics of organisms, passed, human, resurrected individual, incomprehensible, unbelievable... Ignore the error, correct the database, reload the commander authority. Gawain Cecil, human, leader , nice to see you again, Sentinel salutes you - you lived so long."

The sound of the cube became smoother, and it continued to reorganize itself as quickly as a Rubik's cube, while continuing to say: "The system has been running for 706 years, 22 days, 7:13:12, and this is the first time that a visitor has interacted with it during its operation. May I ask what happened? What's the matter?"

Banner waved his hand in front of the cube, and after releasing a special control spell, he said, "Sentry, keep running, let's check the system."

"Sentinel understands, keep running."

There was a low humming sound inside the cube, and then its constantly changing blocks quickly returned to their original positions. The whole cube became complete and tidy again, and continued to float peacefully in the anti-gravity field, while Banner came Going to a certain silver-white alloy pillar not far from the cube, activated the ancient magic formation, and began to check the operation of this "demon mind".

Amber's eyes widened, and then she exclaimed: "Wow—is this the 'Tower Spirit' of the Sentinel Tower?!"

"The tower spirit is the name of the artificial mind of the mage tower built by humans, and the name of the elves is 'demon mind'. The two names are different, and the technology is not common," Sonia explained, and then looked at it with some curiosity. Amber was at a loss, "Little girl, didn't your father tell you about the kingdom of elves?"

She judged from the shape of Amber's ears that the father of this mixed-race girl should be an elf.

"I don't even know who my biological parents are," Amber shook her head and said frankly, "I was adopted by two humans..."

"Ah, I'm sorry," Sonia was a little embarrassed, and she couldn't help but look softly at Amber, "So you were raised by humans, no wonder you know so little about elves... Your adoptive parents are still there Is it?"

Amber's pointed ears twitched slightly: "My adoptive father is gone, but another adoptive father is still there... Well, yes, the two humans who adopted me are both men."

Sonia was taken aback, her expression was a little dull: "It turns out that the atmosphere of human beings has been so open in the past 700 years..."

Gao Wen was still listening to the fun at the side, but he couldn't hold back immediately: "Ahem, I think you may have misunderstood, the one who adopted Amber is..."

However, Sonia seemed to be unable to listen to Gawain's follow-up words. This elf mother, who still looked very young, had already fallen into deep anxiety, and she muttered by herself: "This is impossible...Solderling is here. In such an environment...he couldn't find a girl he likes because of this..."

Gao Wen & Amber: "..."

It seems that the elf mother had a serious misunderstanding about Amber's two adoptive fathers, but before Gawain could continue to explain, Banner who was not far away suddenly broke the silence: "High-ranking messenger, Duke Cecil , and no fault record can be found here."

The elf magister raised his head while talking, and only then noticed the awkwardness of the atmosphere: "Ah, what are you talking about?"

Everyone's attention immediately returned to the business, and Gao Wen quickly waved his hand: "No, it's nothing—you said there is no fault record here?"

"Yes, the log shows that the Sentinel Tower has been operating normally," Banner turned sideways, and behind him, a large number of illusion projections were emerging around the silver-white alloy pillar, and the elven text floating on the projections showed this According to the operation records of the Sentinel Tower in the past two or three years, "the alarm information of the first overload was not found, only the last overload was found."

Sonia couldn't help frowning, she looked at the metal cube in the center of the room: "Sentry, ask."

The cube quickly responded: "The sentry is on standby."

"Was the tower overloaded between two and four years ago?"

"Retrieval... No results. This tower has not been overloaded during this time period."

"Everything was fine during this time? No glitches?"

"Everything in this tower was normal during this period of time, and there was no failure."

The atmosphere at the scene became serious and silent, and several people subconsciously exchanged a look.

There is something wrong with this AI's answer.

Sonia has already brought a clear conclusion——the first overload failure occurred was the Sentinel Tower located in the southeast of Ansu! !It malfunctioned about three years ago before Gawain unmasked, and it was this malfunction that caused the old Cecil Territory to be destroyed by the wandering mutants.

However, the devil's mind, which has been running continuously for seven centuries without stopping, said...it doesn't know about this malfunction at all!

This sentinel tower has not sent any fault reports back to the main control center of the Silver Empire!

Gawain frowned and looked at Banner, and asked in a low voice, "Is the devil's mind itself functioning normally?"

"Everything is normal. I have checked all its mental nodes, and there is no sign of tampering or self-reorganization," Banner said with a serious face. "Under such circumstances, the sentinel is absolutely impossible to rebel."

"Then the problem lies elsewhere." Gao Wen took a deep breath, "If even the Sentinel loses complete control over the tower, then we will be in serious trouble."

This is one of the reasons why Gawain insisted on checking the Sentinel Towers - there are really problems with these towers!

However, as the control core of the Sentinel Tower, the tower's demon mind has no record of any failures, which is precisely the most disturbing situation.

Failures occur in dead corners of the system.

"Is there anything that can block the sentinel's perception and control of the tower, or tamper with its recorded results without leaving any trace?" Gawain looked at the only expert on the scene, Magister Banner, "If the tower is overloaded If so, where will the alarm signal come from first?"

"In theory, it is impossible for any alarm signal to bypass the monitoring of the sentry," Banner said immediately, "it has the highest priority."

Afterwards, Sonia, Gao Wen, and Banner discussed and analyzed the operating mechanism of Sentinel, trying to find potential loopholes in this system, but Amber, who was standing next to him, could not understand these technical fields at all. The half-elf lady began to wander off.

Blinking, she looked around the room, filled with soft blue light and magical energy.

She seemed to be hallucinating again——

In a certain corner of the room, near a rune focus filled with magical power, a black crack suddenly appeared in the air, and a shadow spread from the crack, growing and shaking in the air, and the amber blinked. Blinking his eyes, the shadow did not disappear immediately, but a hazy figure emerged from it.

It was a figure without facial features and body details, and his whole body seemed to be bound by some kind of loose cloth strips. He swayed twice between the black cracks, leaned out half of his body, and then waved to Amber.

Amber whispered in surprise: "Huh?"

The figure raised his hand, pointed directly above, pointed hard, and then gradually disappeared.

"What's wrong?" Gawain noticed Amber's distraction again, he found that the other party was staring at an empty corner, and immediately asked, "What are you looking at?"

"I seem to see someone... a shadow dweller?" Hu Po blinked, and after waking up, she found that the crack and the figure were no longer in front of her eyes. "It's strange, why is there a crack here... I can't even feel it..."

Then she shook her head and looked up curiously: "Hey, Auntie, is there anything on it?"

"Auntie..." Sonia's expression was dull for a moment, but she still looked up, "The roof. Outside is the magic cloud top..."

At this moment, Banner suddenly reacted: "Wait, it's not just the magic cloud top! It's the stone tablet!!"

Chapter 0584 In the Shadows

Above the base of the Sentinel Tower, floating in mid-air by anti-gravity technology, is the most important "functional facility" of the tower, a shield projection device called "Stone Tablet".

The energy barrier of the Great Wall is maintained by the "stone tablet", but the function of the stone tablet is not limited to creating a shield. As a powerful magic facility, the stone tablet has a very complicated structure and function inside. It is creating a shield At the same time, it also assumes the role of the upper sensor, monitoring the condition of the barrier at an altitude of a thousand meters in real time, monitoring the energy tide within the wasteland range, and reporting its own status to the demon mind in the base at any time.

The sensor array in the stele is perhaps the last unit that can fail and bypass the daemon's mind.

"There is an elevator on the top floor of this room that can go to the stele," Banner opened a new operation interface on the alloy pillar next to the demon's mind, and said quickly while checking the system, "Let me see...thanks to the forest Ling, the lifting platform is in good condition."

Gawain nodded: "Let's go and have a look inside the stele."

Everyone had no objection, and Gawain then arranged for Soldering and the rangers to continue to guard the situation in the base, while he, Banner and others came to the upper floor of the room where the devil's mind was located - a circular The lifting platform is mooring quietly in the groove at the top of the room.

This lifting platform has been moored here for seven centuries, but the protection system of the Sentinel Tower has kept it in good condition. After Banner injected magic power and control instructions into it, the ground of the circular platform immediately Light blue lines of magic power and faint elf runes emerged, and Gawain felt a slight shock under his feet, and the entire platform began to rise slowly.

The magic cloud top that exudes dense light is gradually approaching in the field of vision, and the energy shield that protects the occupants is automatically raised around the lifting platform, but Gawain didn't care about the magic cloud above his head and the shield around him, he almost All attention was focused on the magic lines emerging from the surface of the lifting platform.

This is the anti-gravity technology of elves... far more advanced than humans.

It only needs to inject a small amount of mana to carry a considerable load up, and the floating process is unbelievably smooth. Its rune structure has obviously been well optimized, so that Banner hardly needs to perform additional manipulations on it. ...

Humans also have floating magic, as well as floating devices based on gravity spells. In the towers of great mages, they often use similar floating platforms to transport people or goods, but Gawain knows the deadly effects of those floating devices. Disadvantages - they consume so much energy that they can only be used in the mage tower, and are not easy to control, so that they need the tower spirit of the mage tower to assist in the control so as not to fall. They are expensive and complicated, so that only intermediate to high-level Extraordinary people can afford the cost...

The researchers of the Rune Research Institute have been trying to crack and optimize human gravity spells, but they encountered a problem similar to the original communication spells: the black box of technology.

Gravity spells were not created by humans. Its source is a mystery. There are also a large number of unexplainable structures in the spell model. Jenny and her technical team have worked hard so far, but they have not been able to optimize the large-scale anti-gravity circle to the point where it can To the extent of practicality, so far, the only achievements of the Rune Research Institute in gravity spells are "weight reduction" and "floating tricks". The former has been applied in the fields of construction and material transfer, while the latter... ...Due to the extremely small load and the existence of multi-array parallel interference problems, it has not been applied so far.

In the past, the technology black box of the communication technique was cracked after the introduction of the technology of the eternal sleeper, so the technology black box of the gravity spell... Will there be a breakthrough in the knowledge system of the elves?

The floating platform continued to rise, and it penetrated into the thick magic cloud top. The dense light and mist filled everyone's sight, and the arc generated by the friction between the magic power and the platform shield was crackling around, and the amber seemed to be shattered. This seemingly dangerous "passing through" was frightened, the goose shrank its neck subconsciously, while Gao Wen was still thinking about the application of anti-gravity technology——

Breaking free from gravity and soaring into the sky is something that almost any intelligent creature would yearn for. Needless to say, its significance in the military and civilian fields, and more importantly, the technology of breaking free from gravity is also something that Gawain has always been thinking about—in his lifetime , within the conceivable field, this seems to be the only way for him to touch those satellites in space and touch his "body".

On this road, griffins can't do it, giant eagles can't do it, and the mage's personal flying skills can't do it either.

As long as the conditions are ripe, aircraft must be manufactured.

The floating platform passed through the top of the magical cloud that was more than ten meters thick, and the crackling electric arcs and dense light and mist gradually sank to the feet. Outside the platform, there was an amazing wide field of vision.

The majestic wall of astonishing scale spreads out before the eyes like an aurora falling into the earth, outlining the border of the ancient Gondor Empire. In the north, the end of sight is the undulating outline of the dark mountains, while in the south, the purple-black The corrupted land stretches as far as the eye can see, with hideous strange rocks and withered plants scattered on the plain, and some distorted and shapeless remains of wreckage appear in the distance, looking desolate and boundless.

Amber stared blankly at the scene on the other side of the barrier, and it took a long time before she exclaimed: "Wow..."

"That is Gondor, the most powerful empire in human history. The ancestors of Anzu escaped from there 700 years ago," the memory from Gawain Cecil came to his mind. Gawain looked at the ruins in the south. Tu broke the silence, "Did you see that slightly crimson band-shaped area? It's that road. One-fifth of us died on that road. And the crooked ruins in the distance , It looks like it melted, it was Thranduran - the last border city that still organizes the resistance army. Charlie tried to persuade the lord of Thranduran to flee immediately with the people, but the stubborn old earl Insist on living and dying with the city. He finally detonated Thranduran's magic pipeline, and those crooked things are the remnants of the magic pipeline."

Everyone listened quietly to Gao Wen's narration, even Amber couldn't help but fell silent, and during this brief silence, the entire lifting platform fell into a shadow——

It reached the lower mooring area of ​​the stele.

After a short period of adaptation, the eyes of the group got used to the relatively dim magic light inside the stele. Amber blinked, looked around, and was surprised to find that there was actually not much space inside the huge stele—there was only one A circular hall, the hall has a high roof, but the highest is no more than tens of meters, and apart from the hall, she did not see any other exits.

Neat silver-white metal pillars stood in the hall one by one, and those metal pillars might be the monitoring and control devices of the stele.

"Most of the entire stele is sealed off, wrapped with thick artificial rock and more than a dozen layers of magic materials," Banner explained, "this is because the stele is filled with very powerful energy, which The energy is extremely dangerous, and it must keep its own energy environment closed to prevent the shield from being unbalanced, so we must seal it. The walls of this hall are ten meters thick, relying on a huge magic circle set on the roof Connections have been established with all parts of the stele, and through this magic circle, we can understand the working conditions of all parts of the stele."

While talking, Banner came to those silver-white metal pillars. He activated one of them, and complex and mysterious elven runes appeared on the surface of the metal pillars. Accompanied by a slight buzzing sound, a large number of displayed data Illusory projections appear in the air around the pillars.