Chapter 1356: Chapter 1355: Ancient Message

Gawain possessed two perspectives looking down on this planet from outer space.

One was the "satellite view" that he brought with him after his transmigration, originating from a geosynchronous satellite operating near the equator. Its perspective was limited to the Loren Continent and a small surrounding area. The second was the Firmament Station overlook view, obtained by exploiting a loophole in the authority system at a later stage—strictly speaking, the system situation of the Firmament Station is even worse than that of the synchronous satellite. Due to similar aging and the impact from Amon three thousand years ago, the Firmament Station is currently in a state of severe damage. Many of its arcs have gone dark, and the surveillance system is stuck. From Gawain’s side, only the cameras from one section of the arc can be used.

But due to the enormous scale of the Firmament Station and its special monitoring position, when he uses it to overlook the earth, he can still see things that surveillance satellites cannot, such as—large tracts of sea area in the Southwest region of the Loren Continent.

In space, an inconspicuous light lit up on the massive Orbital Ring Space Station. On the inner orbital path facing the Loren Continent, several monitoring devices slid out of the protective bays, rapidly moving along the tracks and adjusting their focus. The ancient sensor units operated silently in space, collecting data from the planet’s surface. Meanwhile, on the ground, Gawain’s mind was highly focused, slowly adjusting the ground monitoring mechanisms inside the space station while countless guesses and thoughts emerged in his mind. His brainstorming continued until the images in his mind gradually became clear, with the shadow of the Winter and other main ships emerging near the base of the orbital elevator at the edge of his vision.

Gawain blinked in astonishment, "rubbing his eyes" in his consciousness, prompting the optical sensors on the Firmament Station to zoom the lens. At the extreme boundary of this view angle, the orbital elevator connecting from space to the planet’s surface became a little clearer than before. After zooming in several times, the sea surface imagery observed by Gawain also became clearer than before: that was unmistakably the Winter.

He recognized the ship’s uniquely designed multiple wing plates and the weapon deck equipped with a giant Rainbow Light Generator—the fleet following behind that ship was none other than the Empire Expedition Fleet he had lost!

"Oh... how did they get there?" Gawain muttered subconsciously in his mind, "This is unscientific... the distance from the Ordo Estuary to that elevator can’t be explained by just a storm, and this position..."

But regardless of how he muttered, the fact was laid in front of him: the missing Empire fleet had been found, now right under his nose (in a physical sense).

After a brief stupor to accept this fact, Gawain immediately thought of the series of system notification sounds he heard earlier in his mind. Previously, he was only confused, but now he vaguely guessed some truths: Byron’s side, after getting lost, evidently did not stand idle but had sent scouting teams to the orbital elevator. The explorers’ landing and contact triggered a system left by the Voyager, which, being connected to the Firmament Station, sent a series of notifications his way...

Judging from the content of the notifications, the Voyager evidently left a "standard procedure" in the Firmament Station for dealing with such events, which might be the difference between the two orbital elevators and the "industrial tower" in Talronde. However, Gawain did not know the details of this procedure. What would happen next? How would the orbital elevator handle unauthorized contacts? Would the Winter’s approach be regarded as a threat by that tower? And most importantly... how could he contact Byron, who was currently floating right under his nose?

In the dark virtual space formed by connecting with the Firmament Station, Gawain pondered for a few minutes and found himself completely at a loss—he searched around in the system but found nothing like a loudspeaker near the orbital elevator, nor could he find a microphone for ground communication in the system...

It seemed like he could only look from above, watching Byron’s sent-out scouting teams poke around near the orbital elevator, hoping they wouldn’t do anything too deadly. But then he thought about how the primordial elves back then had also drifted near the orbital elevator, and despite making quite a scene, the result was only some mutations before they were released by the Voyager system. Thinking this way... maybe there wasn’t much to worry about, probably...

Gawain’s thoughts involuntarily drifted, and he couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if the scouting team Byron sent did something terribly wrong. Back then, the primordial elves became a bunch of subtypes like silver elves, gray elves, and sea elves after climbing a tower. If Byron’s fleet returned with a ship of beast-eared macho men, what the hell would he explain to Pea?

With a head full of racing thoughts, Gawain frowned, continuing to focus on the scene being fed back by the monitoring system, watching his Empire fleet float near that Steel Isle...

...

"This thing is glowing ahhhhhhh!!"

For a moment, Lady Cassandra’s scream echoed through the entire communication channel, her sea demon’s uniquely penetrating voice almost bursting Byron’s eardrums—but Cassandra quickly calmed down because she realized that, apart from the glow, the metal ring wall in front of her hadn’t changed in any other way.

The sea breeze remained gentle, and the sunlight continued shining brightly. Three sea demons who had landed stared at each other with wide eyes, and the vapor rising in the sunlight circled around them under control to prevent them from turning into dried fish in the sun. The communicator on Cassandra’s chest finally buzzed: "Hello, hello? Hello—Lady Cassandra? Are you alright over there?"

"We’re fine," Cassandra finally snapped out of her stupor, hurriedly responding while checking her situation, "the outer ring structure here suddenly started glowing just now. I suspect I might have accidentally triggered something here, but nothing happened afterward... we plan to continue our exploration."

"Continue exploring?" Byron’s voice from the other side sounded relieved, "Make sure to protect yourselves, and try not to touch anything near the tower unnecessarily."

"Understood, understood," Cassandra nodded repeatedly, using her tail to wrap around a nearby metal pipe, cautiously pulling herself back two steps, and then waving to the two sea demons she brought along, "Sisters, let’s continue checking along this ’ring,’ see if we can find an open entrance or something..."

After this thrilling yet uneventful little episode, the sea demons relied on their almost end-stage nerves to calm down and continue their happy exploration journey. And during the subsequent hours-long exploration, no accident happened again.

The ancient Voyager facility remained silent in front of the explorers, allowing these deep-sea fish on an outing to roam around it silently.

The tension caused by the earlier "sudden glow of the relic" incident gradually subsided in the minds of the Winter’s commanders. Although they maintained enough caution and vigilance, they had already started focusing on the subsequent exploration actions and paid attention to the real-time images sent back by Cassandra from the front, periodically asking the exploration team members to focus on examining things that seemed like words or markers and recording the information.

The words and markers left by the Voyager were something elusive to the mortal races of this world. But now, as more and more mortals on the Loren Continent come into contact with information related to the Voyager legacy, research in this field has entered the initial stages. Dragons can recognize the Voyager’s script, and Gawain Cecil, ruler of the Cecil Empire, also possesses mysterious knowledge in this area, so the recorded information would be of great value upon being brought back—presumably, the "Voyager Linguists" in the country, even the King himself, would be quite interested in this.

Watching the information Cassandra kept sending back, Byron couldn’t help but think it would have been great if there were a few experts on Voyager scripts in his fleet. He could then understand what the numerous facilities on that island were used for—alas, this could only be a thought.

The team he was leading wasn’t a research fleet; the Winter’s original mission was to blow up Treants and aberrations on the southern battlefields of the continent... Who would have thought that such a purely combat mission would ultimately turn into an exploration of foreign lands?

These unrelated thoughts flashed through his mind as the images transmitted by Cassandra moved across the holographic projection in front of the command chair. Just then, Byron caught something unusual out of the corner of his eye and quickly reacted: "Wait a minute, Lady Cassandra, turn the camera back—the text on that metal plate looks off!"

Cassandra flicked her tail, quickly turned around, and returned to where she had just recorded video footage. This was an open and flat metal "square" located near a massive gate (Cassandra was about to inspect the situation inside that gate). Around the square, there were numerous neatly arranged, obelisk-like unknown structures. In front of one of these obelisks stood a large metal plate, engraved with mottled patterns.

For Lady Cassandra, who lived in the deep sea and specialized in mechanical repairs, ocean navigation, and death metal rock, language and text were her least strong areas. Yet, even so, when she carefully examined the ornate patterns on the metal plate under Byron’s remote reminder, she immediately realized that these patterns were significantly different from the Voyager texts she had discovered in other areas.

These patterns were also text—another kind of text.

On the bridge of the Winter, Asharena, who had been resting, was called over to join Byron in examining the images transmitted by Cassandra. After closely identifying the mottled carvings on the metal plate, this red-haired Dragonbranded Witch finally arrived at a conclusion: "...It’s Ancient Elvish Language, the most primitive version. The grammar and the writing style of some of the letters have already diverged from contemporary forms, but it can still be recognized."

"Ancient Elvish Language?" Byron looked at her with some surprise, "You can understand Ancient Elvish Language?"

"I know a little. Although there are certain differences between Ancient Elvish Language and today’s Elvish Language, their roots are the same. The silver elves’ official language system has preserved this aspect most thoroughly. Before I ran away from home to prepare for an adventure in the ’outside world,’ I did a lot of preparatory work, which included studying various languages—there are seven or eight languages and texts, including the common human language, Dwarvish, and Elvish..."

"Damn, you learned seven or eight foreign languages just to run away from home?" Byron gaped at Asharena in shock, "Are all the kids in the Sacred Dragon Kingdom this hardcore?"

"Before the national gates opened, our only way to leave the mountains was to glide a hundred kilometers into Bitter Winter County from the top of the northern cliffs. If we missed the landing point, we might have to fight off the beasts in the northern mountain range with multiple fractures," Asharena shrugged. "Under these starting conditions, running away from home in the Sacred Dragon Kingdom is a hardcore endeavor. Without a strong foundation in both civility and martial arts, the kids couldn’t be demanding enough to even think of attempting it."

For a moment, Byron didn’t know how to evaluate this overly hardcore race of Dragonborn and could only awkwardly cough a couple of times to steer the topic back onto a more serious course. He looked at those ancient elvish characters, his brow slightly furrowing: "Can you translate what’s written on it, then?"

"I’m working on it," Asharena’s eyes were fixed on the holographic projection. The ancient characters reflected in her pupils began to be deciphered bit by bit—although there were still many indecipherable passages, she had already recognized several fragmented sentences. "This is a message... left by the first explorers for those who would come later.

"It mentions that large-scale memory decline and physiological degradation are spreading through the group, which is the result of some ’protection’ mechanism within the sentinel tower... Those who still retained complete cognitive abilities left the warning on the metal plate, continually resisting the ’memory erasure’ effect in their minds as they engraved these texts...

"It mentions that the hall at the base of the tower is safe, but there’s an authentication mechanism for ascending to the upper levels. This mechanism once warned intruders not to continue climbing higher, but some reckless individuals ignored the tower’s warning, triggering some ancient system...

"There’s also a mention of some giant secret... or perhaps truth? This phrase is untranslatable—the spelling changes too drastically...

"There’s a warning here, advising future visitors not to rashly proceed to the upper levels of the tower because it is ’too soon,’ followed by a long passage that’s difficult to understand.

"Finally, here..."

Ashareena suddenly furrowed her brow, seemingly striving to interpret the content on the screen. It took her some time to hesitantly say, "The final part looks like a poem? The message sender says it’s the last piece of information they can remember bringing out of the tower. It reads:

"Do not revel in this illusory tranquility of the long night; eventually, the night sky will break.

"Do not linger in your warm cradle; one day, the cradle will overturn.

"Do not slumber within the sanctuary of the heart; the heart’s asylum will inevitably become an unbreakable shackle.

"Set forth, before the stars illuminate the sky; set forth, before the long night ends.

"If you delay, daylight will soon arrive."

Ashareena raised her head, her gaze shifting from the holographic projection to Byron’s face.

"That’s all... Why does your expression look so strange?"

"The King has mentioned this poem to us," Byron’s expression turned unusually solemn, a demeanor Asharena seldom witnessed in this typically nonchalant man, "I think... we might need to take some risks."

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