Chapter 1241 - 1240: Sentinel Towers?

Chapter 1241: Chapter 1240: Sentinel Towers?

The grand giant sun was sinking towards the distant horizon, its sun corona, with pale wood-grain lines, only left a narrow arc edge. The halo rising from the edge of the corona diffused into the cloud background, resembling a fiery sky. During the last few minutes of this day, it burned brightly, under the glow of the setting sun, bathing the entire city in Gawain’s eyes in a sea of gold and red.

He stood at the end of the terrace, gazing towards the direction of the Dark Mountain Range. The nearing winter cold wind blew from the side, faintly bringing the command voices of the guards’ soldiers from their dusk drills. In this rare, slightly leisure moment, he quietly thought about the plan to counterattack the wastelands and the upcoming journey to Talronde — until a familiar presence suddenly appeared in his perception, disrupting his steadily spreading thoughts.

Following the feeling, he looked towards the source of the presence and saw a twisted shadow rapidly forming in the air. Amber then jumped out from the shadow, bounced twice, and came in front of him — in the next second, the distinctive and penetrating beep of this Shadow Assault Goose broke the terrace’s twilight tranquility:

"Hey, hey! Something happened! Let me tell you, something big happened! I seem to have mistakenly, maybe accidentally, perhaps stumbled into Lady Night’s kingdom just now..."

Gawain’s thoughts and the terrace’s tranquility simultaneously shattered, and the astonishing information barked out by Amber stunned him right on the spot. It took him a full ten seconds to react, staring dumbfounded at the cheeky and bouncing half-elf before him: "Ah?! What did you say?! Say it again?!"

"I seem to have mistakenly, maybe accidentally, perhaps..."

"Get rid of those fillers!"

"I just researched sand and somehow stumbled into Lady Night’s kingdom..." Amber shrunk her neck immediately, her face covered with an expression that said, "I just did something crazy but didn’t die, yet being discovered by you now makes me nervous." "Luckily, I didn’t directly see God..."

"You researched the ’Shadow Sand Dust’... and found yourself in the Kingdom of Shadows?" Gawain finally confirmed he didn’t have auditory hallucinations earlier, staring with wide eyes to repeat. He then took a deep breath, letting his skyrocketing blood pressure and heart rate slowly bounce back — this cheeky half-elf hadn’t demonstrated such blood pressure-raising power for a long time, almost making him forget the magnitude of trouble this person could create if left unchecked. At this moment, he felt grateful for his body’s resilience; otherwise, Amber’s words might have burst his cardiovascular system. "Tell me, what exactly happened?"

"Ah, it’s like this..." Amber hurriedly nodded and rapidly began to explain, trying to fully convey her fearless exploration spirit while emphasizing she genuinely intended to research the Shadow Sand Dust and her accidental entry into the kingdom was completely beyond her control. Yet, obviously, her worries were absolutely unnecessary.

Gawain couldn’t care less about these details, nor did he plan from the beginning to give Amber a beating. After all, it was he who tasked Amber with the Shadow Sand Dust research, and any unexpected incidents during this process couldn’t be counted as a "responsibility accident." Rather than questioning whether this disgrace to all living things was more careful or overly reckless during the research, his focus now was on the substantial information provided when describing Lady Night’s kingdom!

"You saw the source of the voice Modir Vealt heard? It was a book? And it claimed itself as ’Vealt’, not knowing ’Modir’ as a name?"

"There was no one on Lady Night’s throne? The book says She might have gone to the ’border’ to handle ’trouble’? Trouble at the border of the Kingdom of Shadows... could it be the pollution we worry about?"

"Did you say Lady Night often dreams? The way to leave the Kingdom of Shadows is to jump from a high place, like awakening from a dream?"

"Beware of the sentinel towers? What sentinel towers to beware of? Vealt doesn’t know himself? Is the whole book filled only with such vague warnings?"

The more Gawain listened, the more shocked he became, his eyes widening larger with Amber’s extremely clear and complete narration. A series of significant intelligence even made him feel a bit dazed in the process. Multiple times when Amber paused slightly, he opened his mouth to confirm some details, and each detail he questioned quickly received a supplement from her.

No matter how unreliable she usually seemed, Amber was ultimately his Minister of Intelligence, and over the past few years, she has grown up. In such serious and formal matters, she was meticulous, with each detail described exceptionally precisely and covering all essential points. By the time she finally finished speaking, Gawain fully understood the whole process of her incredible adventure.

"You really have quite an extraordinary experience..." On the terrace at dusk, Gawain looked at Amber with a helpless expression, "I really did not expect, after not seeing you for just half an afternoon, you could cause such astonishing matters..."

"It’s not what I intended," Amber said even more helplessly than Gawain, "Honestly speaking, I was almost scared to death. You wouldn’t know the extreme measures I employed to maintain my sanity and avoid being tainted by some indescribable entities in the kingdom..."

"Your expression shows me this ’extreme measure’ probably wasn’t very proper," Gawain immediately waved his hand, "Let’s discuss serious matters first. Regarding the ’book’ you saw over there, aside from it claiming itself as Vealt, do you have any clues to explain its connection with the real-world ’Modir Vealt’?"

"No, I only chatted with it briefly ’over there’. Besides the enormous throne altar, there’s just an endless desert and a talking book—simply no clues to discover," Amber shook her head, then showed a pondering expression, "In the real world, there’s Modir, a great adventurer, who appears normal, roaming all over the world. In Lady Night’s kingdom, there’s Vealt, a great adventurer turned into a book, placed before the deity’s throne. This sounds more bizarre than the bards’ stories... What do you think happened to Modir Vealt?"

"I don’t know," Gawain frowned, his mind swirling with many speculations, "It sounds like he seems split into two parts, each possessing a surname and a name, but who knows how all this occurred? According to existing clues, it seems Lady Night is the root cause of everything... but I feel something’s wrong..."

"I feel something’s off too," Amber nodded in agreement, "From Vealt’s few words, I speculate he accidentally entered that ’misplaced kingdom,’ and Lady Night seems not to have actively participated in this... Even though it’s not ruled out the ancient deity concealed something from Vealt, for a deity... Isn’t such concealment unnecessary? She couldn’t just seek someone to tell her stories, right?"

"Speaking of stories... Right, that’s another issue," Gawain said seriously, "Maji mentioned Modir heard ’another self’ recount stories to Lady Night several times after entering ’there,’ and Lady Night reciprocated with the insights in her dreams. However, when Modir returned to the real world, he couldn’t recall any of the dream content described by Lady Night, no matter how he tried. Did you inquire about Lady Night’s dreams with that book? What do Lady Night’s dreams entail?"

"I didn’t have time to ask," Amber shook her head with a slight regret, "I was suddenly ’thrown’ back to the real world, and there were too many things I wanted to ask about at the time that I didn’t think of these. All I know is that the Goddess of Shadows seems to be in a ’dream state’ long-term, and her ’dream’ doesn’t cease whether she’s awake or asleep. I can’t imagine what that’s like; the affairs of the gods are truly too hard to comprehend."

"Enya once told me that the ’dreams’ of the gods are by no means simple dreams. As existences born from the stream of thoughts, all cognitive activities of the gods can actually be seen as results that mirror the real world. Even gods who have detached from the stream of thoughts and gained freedom still have myriad connections between their dreams and the real world," Gawain said thoughtfully, stroking his chin, "And precisely because of this mirroring, the gods consciously control their dreams to prevent their power from spinning out of control—this applies to the now liberated Amon, Goddess of Magic, and Enya alike.

"But I don’t know if the Goddess of Shadows is also subjected to this rule. After all, she has left this world for far too long, with 1.8 million years of thinkstream isolation... enough to turn her into a being almost unrelated to our reality, an ’Outland creature,’ and how much disturbance her dream can cause on our side is entirely unknown."

Amber blinked suddenly and raised an eyebrow at Gawain, "So she’s like an even more ’Outland Wanderer’ than you, roaming endlessly... The difference is that you are to frighten people; she’s the real deal."

Gawain immediately delivered a flick on the half-elf’s head, "Shut up if you can’t say anything good."

Such a clever half-elf, what a pity they have a mouth.jpg.

Amber hugged her head after being knocked, muttering "ouch," and quieted down, while Gawain shook his head, feeling somewhat melancholic.

The issue of the gods’ dreams, the mirroring of thinkstreams... These count as the two most impressionable bizarre rules of this world for him. In the early days, they even made him resistive and perplexed—these shattered his understanding of the ’material world,’ blurring the lines between matter and consciousness. For a soul traversed from planet Earth, the scenery presented is almost absurd and chaotic.

Yet, this world indeed operates like this. The spiritual can influence the material, the material can influence the spiritual. Not only can they reflect each other, but under the right conditions, they can even transform into each other. Whether it’s Mages using spiritual power to craft various magical phenomena, altering the form of matter, or the thinkstream projection of mortals creating gods, or the mental radiation of gods altering reality from nothing... All of this, considered ’irrational’ for Earthlings, actually have a consistent nature behind them.

Sometimes Gawain couldn’t help but think... If there was a theory that could explain this phenomenon where mind and matter influence each other, even transform into each other... perhaps it would explain the ’underlying truth’ of this world.

Would this theory be hidden in the true nature of Magic Power? Or lie in a deeper realm that mortals have yet to imagine?

He inadvertently fell into deep thought, but soon a voice snapped him out of it, "Hey, hey, hey, you’re spacing out again?"

Gawain jolted back to reality, seeing a small hand frantically waving in front of his eyes. He looked up at the owner of the hand, and Amber quickly hugged her head again, "You already knocked me just now! Once is enough for a mistake!"

"Alright, alright, back to business," Gawain waved his hand, organizing his thoughts as he spoke, "Let’s set aside the matters of Wilder and the Lady of Night for now. I’m more concerned with what you mentioned last, the ’Sentinel’... what exactly does Sentinel mean?"

"I don’t know, it’s just one line of warning, with too many possible explanations," Amber shook her head vigorously, "But one thing is certain, this warning is extremely, extremely important, otherwise it wouldn’t fill an entire book—and such a special ’book’ at that."

"The ’Sentinel’ likely refers to some kind of ’guard,’ and this guard should be an incredibly powerful and dangerous existence, or the thing it guards is very dangerous, with the potential to spread pollution, turning Sentinels into sources of danger," Gawain pondered aloud, "By this standard, those responsible for monitoring the Tower of the Inversion Tide among the Dragonkin can be considered ’Sentinels’, the Iron Soldier Corps deep in the Gondor wasteland can also be considered ’Sentinels’, even those Sentinel towers established by the Elves at the nodes of the great walls are ’Sentinels’, and any issue with these Sentinels would be a noteworthy crisis. But compared to the ’beware of the Sentinel’ warning filling Wilder’s ’book’, these still might not measure up."

Amber frowned slightly, "Not measure up?"

Gawain didn’t elaborate, but more thoughts sparked in his mind—

Besides those he mentioned earlier, there are indeed other entities in this world that could be termed as "Sentinels".

Those surveillance satellites high in the sky and the Orbital Ring Space Station "Firmament" circling the planet.

These Voyager relics used to monitor the state of the planet, constantly keeping watch over chaotic waves and gods, they seem even more apt to be termed ’Sentinels’ than anything he mentioned before, and if something went wrong with them, it would indeed warrant a top-level warning.

But how would something go wrong with these? Although they’ve indeed been long out of repair, at most they gradually lose their function, becoming tombstones floating in space. Gawain can ascertain most of their statuses, confirming those satellites and space stations don’t have the possibility of going out of control, and even if one steps back to assume, should they lose control and crash to Earth... For the civilization on this planet today, would it even matter how ’beware’ they are when a bunch of satellites and space stations would crash down from orbit?

Even in their prime, not even the Dragon God could withstand that.

In Gawain’s view, since the warning Amber saw mentioned the phrase ’beware of Sentinels,’ it suggests that for these dangerous ’Sentinels,’ the caution of mortals remains relevant, else there wouldn’t need to be such a warning, the world’s people might as well just "lie flat"...