Chapter 1118: Underneath the Wasteland’s Currents

Gawain paused for a moment, then slowly sat down behind his desk with a serious expression. He looked up and met Veronica’s eyes, noticing that the ancient rebel’s demeanor was more solemn than ever before—so much so that it felt almost suffocating.

The gentle, mask-like smile that usually graced her face had vanished without him realizing when. In this private moment, the true Ophelia Norton stood before him.

“There are things you’ve never wanted to say, so I never asked,” Gawain began, his gaze steady on Veronica. “As a surviving soul from ancient Gondor, you’ve never explained in detail how you lived through the imperial capital’s great explosion, nor how you exist now. As a rebel wandering the human world, you’ve never revealed where your intelligence about the Wasteland comes from.”

Veronica stood quietly across the desk. After a few seconds of silence, she spoke softly: “If you must know, I can tell you now…”

“No, if you don’t want to, I won’t force you,” Gawain shook his head. “I just want to say that I’ve given you enough trust and… tolerance. That requires some measure of honesty in return. You have the right to keep secrets about your privacy or personal boundaries, but anything that could threaten the lands beyond the Barrier—I hope you’ll be frank with me.”

Veronica closed her eyes briefly, then suddenly bowed deeply, her tone as gentle and melodious as ever, but somehow warmer than before. “Please forgive my previous unilateral decisions. It wasn’t intentional concealment, but rather a habit of relying on logic and data-driven deductions, overlooking the unpredictability of ordinary human society’s development. Now, I will tell you everything I know. How to respond… that’s for you to decide.”

She paused, as if searching for the right way to begin, then continued: “The Deep Blue Well… is actually still operational.”

Gawain’s pupils contracted sharply. The shocking news made his heart pound, but then he recalled a strange phenomenon he had once observed while surveying the Gondor Wasteland from above—though the entire wasteland was shrouded in a powerful energy field and thick clouds, making satellite surveillance nearly useless, on one occasion, under the right conditions, he had seen a brilliant flash at the center of the wasteland—the exact location of the old Deep Blue Well!

An ancient surveillance record was suddenly confirmed, and his shock quickly subsided. His expression shifted slightly before settling back into calm as he stared into Veronica’s eyes. “How was it preserved? The great explosion seven hundred years ago… the Deep Blue Well should have been at the epicenter.”

“You’re calmer than I expected. Is it because you’ve obtained some of this information by other means?” Veronica looked at him with mild surprise but wisely didn’t press further, instead answering his question. “The Deep Blue Well was indeed the core of that explosion, but the details of that event and what later generations believed are not the same—it involves the very ‘nature’ of the Deep Blue Well itself.

“What do you think the Deep Blue Well is?”

Veronica suddenly asked him a question, prompting Gawain to think before quickly answering with what most who know Gondor would say: “It’s the energy core of the ancient Gondor Empire, the largest magical focus ever created. It consists of four reaction towers, four arcane reflux chambers, and a main magical surge vent…”

“That’s the common understanding,” Veronica nodded, “but in reality, those reaction towers, reflux chambers, and surge vents are merely ‘ancillary facilities’ humans built to extract energy from the raw magical rift. Long before the Gondorian builders constructed these, the core energy rift of the Deep Blue Well had been erupting on this continent for many years—its history predates human civilization itself, even older than the records of the Silver Elves. It was first a natural magical focus, and only secondarily the extraction devices people know. The true scale of this magical focus… might far exceed anyone’s imagination.

“The erupting ‘magical spring’ in the old Gondor capital was essentially just a branch of the Deep Blue Well exposed to the material world. Its full network is hidden, connected to all elemental realms, demi-planes, and even the borders of divine realms. We don’t know how far it extends deep into this world, but it’s definitely part of the planet’s structure—and a significant part at that. For a planet, even if its nations are destroyed countless times, even if its ecosystems reset repeatedly, the planet itself remains intact.

“So the Deep Blue Well explosion only destroyed those man-made extraction devices. The core energy rift of the ‘well’ itself, after an unprecedented magical energy release, remained essentially unharmed. Over seven hundred years ago, I detected the anomaly and true structure of the Deep Blue Well at the last moment and tried my best to use its vast underlying structure to buffer and channel the magical energy with nowhere else to go. Overall, I failed—the chaotic magic that erupted formed a magical tide that destroyed the empire, what we now call a ‘minor magical tide’—but I did succeed in a small way…”

Gawain frowned slightly. “A small way?”

“I preserved my research base and the main conduit of the Deep Blue Well,” Veronica said, “right beneath the well itself.”

Suddenly, Gawain’s mind raced. His broad imagination from a past life combined with his current experiences allowed him to deduce much. He stared at Veronica. “So you’re still in that research base?”

Veronica looked surprised again. “Actually… yes, I am.”

She smiled faintly. “I didn’t expect you to jump to that conclusion so quickly. It doesn’t fit my impression of you, nor the usual way people think… Is your sharp insight really just from intelligence?”

“Just a flash of inspiration,” Gawain replied casually, then pressed on. “Is the base still operational? What else is there?”

Veronica nodded gently. “There’s also an Iron Legion still in service. Over centuries, I repaired and rebuilt the Iron Legion’s production and maintenance facilities, and modified the aboveground structure of the Deep Blue Well’s main conduit, extracting magic to keep everything running.”

Gawain was stunned. “You’re saying there’s an active Iron Legion deep in the wasteland? And you’ve restored the production and maintenance facilities, even partially reactivated the Deep Blue Well?”

“Yes—but don’t get too excited. Their scale is small, much smaller than you imagine.”

“So all these years, you’ve been doing this deep in the wasteland, while somehow projecting your spirit into the human world outside, observing changes like the ‘Veronica’ we see now,” Gawain said solemnly, marveling. “An Iron Legion… honestly, if you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t believe it. How did they survive such a powerful magical shock?”

“I created large-scale anti-magic shields in the underground facilities, supported by the Deep Blue Well’s main conduit. That allowed them to withstand the intense magical shock,” Veronica explained. “Even so, only a small portion of the Iron Legion survived. There were sixteen Iron Legions stationed as garrisons near my base. I set up independent anti-magic shields for each, but fifteen outposts were destroyed. Only one survived.”

Gawain rubbed his temples, absorbing the explosive information suddenly laid before him. As his thoughts cleared, he looked up at Veronica. “So you’re trapped deep in the wasteland’s core—though you’ve restored a base as a refuge and have an Iron Legion guard, it’s obviously not enough for you to retreat beyond the Great Wall…”

“I never intended to leave,” Veronica shook her head gently. “Though in a sense, I am trapped in the wasteland’s center. I still have tasks to complete, including further research on the Deep Blue Well’s structure and monitoring changes in the wasteland. And by projecting my spirit, I can operate outside as I am now, so leaving isn’t important to me.”

“Alright, that’s your choice. Honestly, there’s not much I can do to help you now,” Gawain nodded, not forgetting the original topic. “Now that I roughly understand your situation and the truth about the Deep Blue Well, can we talk about those cultists stirring in the wasteland? Are they connected to what we just discussed? Are they after the Deep Blue Well?”

“More than just stirring—I suspect they’ve already taken action,” Veronica said gravely. “Recently, there have been anomalies in the wasteland’s core. I lost contact with some Iron Legion soldiers, and others found signs of tampering or modification on energy conduits near the base’s perimeter—expertly done, impossible for wandering mutants or mindless magical entities.”

Gawain furrowed his brow, tapping the desk lightly with his fingers. “You haven’t seen anything directly?”

“For some reason, I can only stay inside the underground base’s core,” Veronica replied. “The patrolling Iron Legion soldiers and a few sensors near the energy conduits are my only means of monitoring the outside. It’s ironic—in such a harsh environment, I know less about what’s around me than about Cecil City thousands of miles away. Because compared to my restricted physical form, this ‘Veronica’ interface has full freedom of movement and can touch the real world.”

Gawain’s curiosity about Veronica/Ophelia’s true physical state deep underground grew immensely, but he knew it was a private matter she likely didn’t want to discuss, so he didn’t press. Instead, he refocused on the cultists. “According to intelligence from Beltira, the ‘All Things End’ faction inside the Great Wall has been active in the Gondor Wasteland for a long time… Have you never caught them? Or confronted them directly?”

“I’ve told you before, my ‘territory’ in the wasteland is actually quite limited. The Iron Legion can only operate within the ruins of the old imperial capital and a narrow zone around its edges. The sensors laid along the conduits only function within that range,” Veronica said with a hint of regret. “Compared to the entire wasteland, my perception is minuscule. And those cultists have apparently been active near the Grant Wall all along—that’s a blind spot in my surveillance. Honestly, if you hadn’t uprooted the End of All Things cult, I wouldn’t have even known there was another faction hiding just outside my refuge.”

“That does sound a bit chilling,” Gawain stopped tapping on the table and thoughtfully rubbed his chin. “You didn’t know about them, but those cultists clearly knew about you—at least they knew the Deep Blue Well was still running. For centuries, they coexisted peacefully with it, almost as if deliberately avoiding you. But recently, they’ve gotten bolder—stealing your soldiers, siphoning your energy… There has to be a reason behind this.”

“Stealing… yes, they are thieves,” Veronica said in a low voice, though there was no anger in her tone. In fact, her emotions were usually so muted it was as if her humanity had been worn away by centuries of duty, and the gentle warmth she normally displayed was just a practiced mask. “I can’t imagine why they suddenly decided to act now, but perhaps it’s connected to the partial eradication of the End of All Things cult outside the Grant Wall.”

“Half of them were wiped out, and the other half started implementing some backup plan,” Gawain mused, as the restless spring wind whispered through the open window. “Looks like I’ll need to check in with Beltira about this… though I doubt she can help much. The cultists operating in the wasteland are too secretive—many of their secrets were hidden even from the former High Patriarch Franken. Besides, if there really was a ‘backup plan,’ Beltira would have reported it by now.”

He shook his head, making a mental note to revisit the matter later, then asked, “Do you have any idea what those cultists want? They’re clearly after the Deep Blue Well… What do you think they need such massive energy for?”

“There are too many possibilities and too little concrete intelligence to draw any reliable conclusions,” Veronica replied. “The energy from the Deep Blue Well can be used for countless things. It grants those capable of controlling it power second only to gods. It can reshape environments or annihilate specific targets. For those cultists entrenched in the wasteland, any one of these reasons would be enough to risk everything.”

(End of chapter)