Chapter 1052: Chapter 1051: Cold Night

Listening to Baldwin Franklin’s report, Gawain’s thoughts gradually expanded—

Intelligence from the tribal country of Augari confirmed one of his previous assumptions: those mysterious signals intercepted by Bitter Winter Castle and Sorinburg were not limited to the Cecil Clan’s territory!

On the other side, Baldwin’s report had come to an end, and he looked at Gawain, "Your Majesty, aside from this, we have also received a letter from the Dwarf Kingdom forwarded by the gray elves’ leader Venna, King Morton Moltenfire from Forge City sends his greetings and has accepted the invitation for the Revitalization Festival in the following month at Silver Station 112. Forge City will send Ambassador Paladin Glintrock to attend the meeting."

"...The dwarves have finally made an official response," Gawain breathed a slight sigh of relief, "It seems that our restarted maritime routes have indeed encouraged their confidence to participate in continental affairs..."

The Dwarf Kingdom, located in the mysterious westernmost territory, although its lands are tightly connected with the Loren Continent, the entire kingdom is completely enclosed by a natural arc-shaped mountain range, blocking the curious gaze of continental kingdoms for millennia, as well as the inhabitants on the other side of the mountains.

Throughout long years, the dwarves have lived self-sufficient on the far side of the mountains. It’s said their kingdom has rich production and an inherently favorable climate, managing to remain prosperous even without communication with other continental nations. They are purported to have developed technology and culture distinctly different from other countries and preserved many ancient traditions from before the first expansion — but all these are mere idle speculation from the world, as almost no one has truly crossed the mountains to witness the dwarf kingdom’s appearance, only a few dwarves who proactively left the kingdom and moved inland occasionally talk about their homeland, describing Forge City as magnificent, Ironstone Hills as rich in gold and silver, Splendid Plains as vast fields, and the Western Coast’s scenery as picturesque...

After ending the communication with the Duke of the West, the air near the desk rippled faintly, Amber’s figure emerged, her face alight with interest, "It’s said that the mountain range encircling the Dwarf Kingdom is protected by ancient forces, any outsider venturing into the mountains would get lost and end up back at the foothills unknowingly, while only the dwarves hold the secret to safely crossing the ridge, hence it’s always the dwarves coming inland, and very few have entered their kingdom..."

"But the Dwarf Kingdom isn’t as mysterious as the legends say — although indeed it has little communication with other regions nowadays, a few hundred years ago when humans were still capable of ocean exploration, Anzu had maritime communication with the dwarves for a period," Gawain said with a smile, "There were indeed many marvelous customs, and the dwarves had unique smelting techniques, but not to the extent described by legends as an ’otherworldly realm’."

"Well, you mentioned that was a few hundred years ago," Amber spread her hands, "For humans with short lifespans, a few hundred years of isolation is enough to turn a once amicable territory into an incomprehensible alien land."

"...That’s quite reasonable," Gawain thought for a moment, admitting Amber’s point, then suddenly recalled something and looked up to ask, "Have you got any leads on the matter I asked you to investigate?"

"You mean about the ’Gondor Iron Man’?" Amber immediately grasped Gawain’s meaning, she slightly pondered as the information collected recently surfaced in her mind, "There are some findings but not any groundbreaking progress.

"Firstly, about ’Lady Diana’ herself in Typhon. It can currently be confirmed that she leads Typhon’s special forces ’Wanderers’ — Wanderers are elite troops that directly serve the Typhon Royal Family, segmented internally based on functions and similar to Anzu Era’s royal shadow guard or the current Steel Cavalry, mainly executing special operations and intelligence tasks both domestically and internationally. Wanderers’ main combat personnel are primarily elite combat Mages, trained specially for combat, differing from ordinary Mages in their exceptional performance in various practical conditions including ambushes, assassination, and close combat, somewhat resembling the ’Mage Soldiers’ recorded in Gondor’s history, and evidently, such special soldiers are a result of that ’Gondor Iron Man’s personal training.

"Secondly, it’s confirmed that Diana has long been loyal to the Augustus Clan, yet she seems solely loyal to the ’Emperor’ position. She doesn’t side with any political forces, supports no uncoronated heir, nor engages in factional disputes — I suspect this relates to the contract she established with the royal family after being ’restored’ by Typhon Scholars centuries ago.

"The above two points are what can be compiled and gathered from public channels, the third is more intriguing... it’s an ’unexpected finding’ from ’Number Twenty-Five’..."

Amber, while speaking, rummaged a bit from her bag, pulling out a carefully folded sheet of paper and unfolded it in front of Gawain.

Could it be intelligence sent by Daniel? Gawain felt surprised for a moment, not expecting something related to "Diana" to come from Daniel, then his attention was drawn to what Amber displayed—

On the unfolded white paper, instead of ancient Gondor’s technical secrets or any contemporary Typhon secret deployments, there was a picture akin to child’s scribbles: several ink dots scattered seemingly at random on the paper, with a small, meaningless circle drawn amid the dots, and lines resembling radiating rays connecting those ink dots to the central circle, the entire picture looked as if a failed doodle, a proportionately messed-up sun, with abstract rays surrounding it.

"What is this?" Gawain felt baffled by the picture, "Some kind of abstract art?"

"This is the ’artwork’ of ’Lady Diana’, it’s the only ’artwork’ she regularly ’creates’," Amber placed the unfolded paper on Gawain’s desk, her expression a bit odd, "It sounds strange, even ’Number Twenty-Five’ doesn’t understand it; he learned about this incident by chance from Typhon Royal Mage Association’s president—

"The maidservant supervisor in the Obsidian Palace, ’never errs and always vigilant’ Lady Diana, occasionally makes strange moves when alone, she seeks out pen and paper to doodle, the doodle’s content is always this kind of picture, again and again, again and again... No one knows her reasoning behind it, even she seems oblivious to why. Most of these doodles are destroyed immediately, but a few appear to be forgotten by her, thus falling into the hands of those few with the privilege of entering the Obsidian Palace and those curious ones."

"This really is...unexpected," Gawain frowned slightly, looking at the doodle on his desk, unable to fathom the depth of the picture, only bringing some seemingly mismatched associations to mind with the current world’s style: AI unconstrained creating unconscious "artworks", enigmatic scribbles by derailed robots, memory errors from ancient automated servants causing information recurrences...

"Is this the precise graphic of those doodles? Or merely a ’conceptual diagram’ based on memory?" Gawain raised his head, curious to ask.

"Number Twenty-Five said this drawing has over ninety percent fidelity," Amber nodded, "At most there might be minor discrepancies in the proportions of certain lines."

"Have you shown this to Kamel and Veronica?" Gawain asked again. "They are from Gondor’s Era, maybe they have some clues."

"They’ve seen it, but they don’t understand either," Amber shook her head. "Kamel thinks this might be an abstract representation of some ancient array of magic symbols, while Veronica suspects it has something to do with Diana’s deepest memories from when she served at Wepland Observatory, but they are just speculating."

"... Diana is a Gondor Iron Man who has lost part of her memory, and those memories relate to her experiences leaving Wepland Observatory. These images might reveal certain ’impressions’ deep in her storage, but to an observer lacking information they are just meaningless graffiti," Gawain said thoughtfully. "I’m very interested in the secrets of that Gondor Iron Man. Upload this image to the neural network and send it, under confidentiality conditions, to the analysis team under Bishop Megal III and Selena Gerfen to identify if there is any known thing that resembles this graffiti."

Amber nodded: "Okay, I’ll do this when I get back."

She agreed while putting away the piece of paper and soon noticed that Gawain seemed to be thinking of something else, turning a small silver-white ring unconsciously in his hand. She quickly recognized what the ring was: "Thinking about Talronde again?"

"Still can’t contact the Mithril Vault," Gawain nodded, tossing the Mithril Ring onto the table, watching the small ring bounce off the table with a clear sound. "Given those dragons’ level of technology, it’s impossible for a communication system to take so long to fix. With the Mithril Vault’s ’reputation’ for centuries, it’s impossible for them to remain motionless after losing contact with clients for so long. Now that the Eternal Storm has disappeared, according to the intelligence we have, Talronde really seems to be in trouble... And it’s not a small matter."

"You’re worried about those dragons?" Amber blinked. "Actually, I think there’s nothing to worry about... They’re dragons, invincible dragons in both legend and reality, they can rush into a volcano and take a sip of heat during eruption, do we really need to worry about creatures so strong they defy reason?"

"Precisely because they are such a strong race, I am exceptionally worried now—I worry that an unpredictable disaster is brewing at the north pole, and I’m concerned it might affect the human world," Gawain shook his head. "Suppose the worst-case scenario, the entire Talronde is destroyed by some irresistible force—how strong must that force be?"

Amber was startled by Gawain’s speculation, her eyes widened: "This... it shouldn’t be that bad, right?"

"Hypothetically, just hypothetically," Gawain let out a breath. "It’s like having a mighty giant stand far away, you clearly know the giant is there, know how strong he is, know he was fine a second ago, but suddenly the giant is gone, and because you are too far, you can’t see how he disappeared, can’t see if he was attacked... In this scenario, you might worry about the giant’s safety, but you should be more concerned about whether the force that made the giant disappear is spreading to you."

Amber thought for a moment, rubbing her arms: "... Ooh, I’ve got goosebumps now!"

"Ultimately, it’s the uncertainty of the intelligence that makes me overthink," Gawain sighed, admitting he was overthinking. "So I hope those enthusiastic sea demons and Naga from Northport can investigate some clues, at least first figure out what happened with the Eternal Storm."

...

The cold wind howled, hitting the twisted steel framework and the temporary wind barrier walls. The heat source device unearthed from the ruins emitted a warm orange-red glow under the dim sky, radiating a wide range of constant temperature heat. In the corner of the camp, a malfunctioning projection device was placed, several energy packs connected under the base. The images in the holographic projection were almost entirely unrecognizable, but the intermittent music could still be heard from the base.

A few weakened young Dragonkin lay on the empty ground next to the projection device, the malfunctioning implants and withdrawal symptoms from the enhancers tortured their spirits. The intermittent music from the device was currently supporting their will, yet this insignificant support was almost meaningless, and eventually they still had to rely on their own stubborn will to endure this cold dusk.

This isn’t easy— for most Dragonkin who once lived in Lower Talronde, completely separating from the hallucinogens and enhancers means facing not just mental pain, but also severe physical harm as their nervous systems transmit burning pain when unable to adapt.

Returning to human form after resettling in the camp, Melita stood beside a large rock next to the wind barrier wall, her pale purple eyes watching those compatriots twitching in the cold wind. Her gaze fell on one young red dragon among them, and it didn’t move for a long time.

This was the young mechanic who had performed implant surgery on her this afternoon—she had been busy all day, her efforts sparing over a dozen compatriots from fatal harm and reducing pain caused by implant malfunctions. But after dusk fell, she encountered severe withdrawal symptoms from the enhancers... No one in the camp could help her.

The limited reserves of enhancers in the shelter had already been used to rescue the injured.

Seemingly noticing Melita’s gaze, the red dragon laying on the ground turned back, revealing a self-deprecating smile amidst convulsions: "I shouldn’t have become so obsessed with ’soul’ and ’gray’... but the sense of accomplishment and fulfillment they brought me were really significant back then...

She referred to two names of enhancers, which had flooded Lower Talronde, directly affecting spiritual aspects.

Melita let out a sigh. She didn’t know what to say to this young mechanic from Lower Talronde, who engaged in illegal implant modifications. She could only do her best to release another large-scale mental soothing once more—this spell had little effect on symptoms caused by enhancer addiction, but the young mechanic still gave her a grateful smile.

Afterward, Melita left the place as if fleeing.

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