Chapter 1383: Chapter 1382: Exotic Space

At the end of the staircase leading to the upper level of the Observatory, the door stood quietly in front of Gawain and his party. The door, cast from some unknown alloy, showed peeling layers of its past coating — inevitable signs of aging silently telling witnesses about the changes of the past seven centuries.

"Simply touching the door will activate an authentication system," Sir Philip said nearby, "Even if the authentication fails, no alarms or security apparatus will be triggered; the door will merely remain locked. We haven’t found where its power source is, likely the whole system is on the other side of the door. To be cautious, we refrained from further provoking this thing."

Diana stood in front of the door, staring at it dazedly. Then she furrowed her brows slightly, "I... do remember this door. The director and the scholar didn’t usually allow ordinary guards into the star observation platform, but I have additional analytical functions, so sometimes I helped with organizing data here..."

"Do you still remember how to open this door?" Amber glanced at Diana, seemingly doubting the reliability of this ancient machine lady with fragmented memories, and murmured, "If you can’t do anything, I might think of a way..."

"I only remember that human workers at the Observatory needed a card to open this door, while guards like me with authorization simply need to..." Diana was muttering to herself softly as her hand instinctively moved, pressing it on the center of the door. The next second, everyone present heard a faint buzzing sound coming from the sides of the door. A stream of light flowed across the door panel, quickly forming a green mark. Simultaneously, a heavily distorted, crackling voice came from somewhere unknown: "Beep— Employee card, authentication successful.

"Identification EX-800, Senior Guard Diana, you have been absent without cause for 270,365 days, incurring an absentee fine of 26,000,076 Lulangs. Your leave has been canceled until the empire’s history year 3018. For any inquiries, please consult your position supervisor..."

This series of voice broadcasts was not only severely interrupted and incomplete but also in the ancient Gondor language from seven hundred years ago. Many pronunciations of the words were now different. Amber was stunned on the spot, grabbing Gawain’s arm: "Hey hey, what is this door babbling about? Why did Diana’s expression suddenly change...? Can her face show so many emotions?"

"...Pay it no mind, it’s just an error automatically run by an ancient system for many years," Gawain’s mouth twitched several times before he could maintain a calm expression. Then he turned to glance at Diana, "Lady, are you alright?"

"I didn’t expect..." A surge of heat rose behind Diana, and a buzzing seemed to come from within her, "Even after seven hundred years, it still sounds so terrifying..."

"Ahem, don’t take it to heart; anyway, you don’t have to make up for those hundreds of years of absence," Gawain cleared his throat twice, then noticed the edge of the door seemed to have a gap, "In any case, it seems this door is open..."

As he finished speaking, Diana had already adjusted the state of her mind core and gently pushed forward — that door, cast from an unknown alloy and extraordinarily sturdy, was pushed open by her with ease. The piercing sound of metal friction accompanied the scene. The space beyond the door, shrouded in dim darkness and seemingly filled with chaotic mist, presented itself to everyone on the platform.

Gawain leaned forward to get a look at the dim space, feeling that even with a transcendent’s vision, he couldn’t see inside clearly. Furthermore, there was always a layer of haze obstructing his view, which was clearly abnormal. This scene made him instantly cautious: "Is this the ’star observation platform’ on the other side? Something seems off... Sir Philip, throw something in there."

"Yes, Your Majesty." Sir Philip immediately nodded. Then he took a portable Magic Web Terminal from a soldier next to him, carefully placed it at the entrance, and pushed it to the other side of the door with the scabbard of his officer’s sword. Before everyone’s eyes, the Magic Web Terminal, which was in an active state, emitting a faint blue light, went through the door. It seemed to dissolve into darkness or penetrate a curtain and disappeared in the dimness, with the thin mist engulfing it, leaving no trace behind.

"This..." Sir Philip frowned immediately, then glanced at another Magic Web Terminal set on the platform. Seeing the slightly glowing magic symbol on the base of the device but only interference waves in the holographic projection above the terminal, he said, "The Magic Web Terminal we sent is still running, not damaged, but it cannot transmit images back. There seems to be strong interference, or... the distance is too far?"

As he spoke, he looked down at the scabbard of his officer’s sword. When he used it to push the terminal to the other side of the door, about a quarter of its length was swallowed by that darkness, but afterward, he withdrew the scabbard effortlessly. He examined it carefully for a long time, confirming that there were no signs of damage on the scabbard, nor any remnants of curse or magical erosion.

"...Surely there’s something odd on the other side of that door, like a veil blocking our view, but things can be sent in without getting damaged..." Gawain also noticed the state of Sir Philip’s scabbard and said thoughtfully, "Just a layer of shielding? A protective measure?"

Then, Sir Philip conducted another test with a different Magic Web Terminal. He put the small terminal in recording mode, attached it to a long stick, and sent it through the door. A few minutes later, he retrieved the stick, and the Magic Web Terminal returned intact to this side of the door. However, when Gawain and the others eagerly attempted to play the recorded footage, they saw only dazzling, flickering light spots — typical signs of severe interference.

"It seems the energy reaction we recorded from outside the Observatory indeed leaked from here," Sir Philip said sternly, "Behind the door is a field of extremely high energy, preventing the Magic Web Terminal from functioning within it. The small-scale leakage from this energy field turned into the periodic signal detected by exploration personnel outside, but it seems this energy field doesn’t directly damage entities... It simply interferes with the operation of magic power."

"Did the star observation platform of that era have such a powerful energy source?" Gawain immediately asked Diana beside him.

"No," Diana shook her head, "The star observation platform only had various observation devices, recording devices, and a set of large-scale magic power filter arrays, which were all low-power equipment."

Gawain frowned, just about to ask more, when suddenly Amber’s voice came from the side: "Enough, I suppose I’ll go in and have a look."

Upon hearing this, Gawain was astonished, turning back to look at the half-elf in disbelief — since when had her cowardice subsided? Previously, in similar situations, it was only when he tossed her in himself that this scout would do her job. Why was her enthusiasm so high this time?

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Amber immediately noticed Gawain’s odd gaze and promptly put her hands on her hips, "Didn’t you bring me out here to scout ahead? Or do you think your blood pressure has dropped recently and want to chat with me to treat your low blood pressure?"

Hearing her candid yet shameless remarks, Gawain was instantly convinced this was indeed Amber before him, not some unfortunate soul from another world who swapped into her body. However, he still couldn’t help but mention, "I didn’t expect you to be so proactive. It wasn’t easy to get you to do something voluntarily before..."

"Nonsense, me going voluntarily is better than getting tossed in by you later," Amber rolled her eyes, then her form gradually blurred before everyone. Enveloped by indistinct light and shadow, she turned and walked towards the door leading to the upper level of the star observation platform, "I’m going to scout ahead..."

As the words fell, her figure disappeared in front of everyone, swallowed by the curtain-like chaotic darkness, which made Gawain feel a little uneasy—yet he also had confidence in Amber, thinking that with her top-notch escape skills and survival-first creed, she would definitely flee back immediately if there was any danger...

Just as half a thought crossed his mind, Amber had passed through the curtain for barely two or three seconds, when everyone suddenly felt their sight blur, and a flickering and floating light and shadow darted out of the door, followed by Amber jumping onto the ground and shouting loudly, "Oh my god, it’s incredible over there! Hurry and check it out! I don’t have enough vocabulary!"

Several people guarding the door couldn’t help but glance at each other, but before anyone could take any subconscious action, Sir Philip stepped forward first, simultaneously pressing his hand on his sword, cautiously looking at Amber: "What is the seventeenth article of the seventh Chapter of the Empire Charter?"

Amber was stunned, then widened her eyes, "Huh? How would I know that!"

Upon hearing this expression, Philip immediately relaxed a bit, and Gawain promptly asked another question: "How do you usually address me? I mean, when you slip up."

Amber immediately shrank her neck, glancing at Philip’s sword, murmuring, "If I say that word, he’ll definitely chop me with it..."

Only then did Gawain heave a sigh of relief, reaching out to smooth her hair, "Necessary procedure, you understand."

"I understand, I understand, in such an eerie place, who knows what the returning explorers have turned into, and that’s how many powerful adventurers have been wiped out here," Amber waved her hand magnanimously, indicating her rich experience in the field, "Let’s talk about the other side, there’s no danger there, but it’s an... utterly incredible place, definitely not within normal space. You’ll understand once you take a look."

Gawain raised his head, saw Diana nod slightly, and then he took a step, leading everyone to cross that eerie door together.

As darkness descended, he felt as if he passed through a cool curtain, while a tingling itch spread across his skin like an electric shock, and the rapid change in the surrounding atmosphere made him quickly realize he was traversing some kind of "discontinuous space-time," a feeling all too familiar to him—during the deepest part of the Eternal Storm, when he entered the still "gods’ battlefield," he experienced this wondrous sensation of entering a space-time anomaly.

Then he stepped further, the darkness instantly receded, and everyone’s eyes opened wide.

Gawain’s eyes widened.

He saw an exceedingly vast circular platform; it looked like the top layer of an observatory, yet it was absolutely not a normal "upper layer"—the original walls and the dome that should have existed above were torn into pieces by some unknown force, innumerable colossal wall and roof debris floated around the platform as if losing gravity, rotating in the air, and beyond those fragmented floating debris, was a sky filled with chaotic colors, a kind of purple-red background as if filtered through a lens filters over the entire space, giving everything a distinct "otherworldly" feel.

Yet in the space directly above this "otherworldly" realm, Gawain saw a starry sky clearer and more brilliant than any other place—the purple-red sky seemed to have cracked open, like a curtain ripping a hole, revealing an irregularly massive fissure in which stars shimmered.

It was a breathtakingly beautiful starry sky, yet in this obviously eerie space, the only normal starry sky became the most bizarre existence.

"This is..." Philip’s voice came from behind, as he too followed Gawain into the space; the strange scenery before him made the young Imperial General’s eyes widen, his gaze initially landing on those gigantic building fragments losing gravity, swirling like a vortex in the high sky nearby, "are those fragments from the observatory’s upper layer structures? But clearly, from the outside..."

"From outside, the observatory was intact, its upper layer visible at a glance," Gawain said solemnly, "but here, we see a shattered star observation platform, and the entire platform seems to have fallen into distorted space-time..."

Amber nervously swallowed, looking up at Gawain: "You know more, what do you think is going on?"

"Perhaps... this is some kind of space-time mirror, a ’replica’ of the Wepland Observatory generated at a warped space-time node, in this disordered time-space, the observatory has been destroyed, or it could be that here is a similar environment to the shadow realm, the observatory from the real world has created an erroneously overlapping phantom here, or... someone actively created such an abnormal space," Gawain shook his head, "there are endless speculations, but none are meaningful, the key is the only person among us who might hold clues—Lady Diana, do you recognize this place? Do you have any thoughts?"

Diana also walked through the door—now the door remained standing where it should be, but there was no wall around it, like a bizarre space-time entry standing alone in mid-air, with darkness beyond the door.

Diana looked up at this abnormal place, she couldn’t help showing a surprised expression on her face, then said softly: "This is... indeed the star observation platform, I still recognize its appearance, but why it became..."

Confusedly musing to herself, unknowingly stepping forward, heading to the center of the platform, which was the focal point of the entire space, a nebulous glow gathered there, seemingly guarding some secret, blocking the view of everyone, Gawain had also seen that glow just now but dared not rush forward, now seeing Diana moving, he immediately couldn’t help speaking: "Be cautious, Lady Diana..."

Gawain’s words were left unfinished.

As a humming sound of energy suddenly rang through the air, a nebulous glow suddenly condensed in front of Diana, interrupting Gawain’s words, and making everyone instantly on edge as if facing an enemy, yet Diana immediately saw from that nebulous glow a familiar figure gradually emerging.

"Sir Scott... Director?"

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