Chapter 1282: The Ballad

The storage core, embedded with numerous crystals and high-purity gemstones, was carefully extracted. At the same time, the “Explorer” magical automaton stirred from its maintenance state. This round, mechanical device began to move its long segmented limbs, circling around the group before stopping in front of Kamail. Its optical sensors swayed back and forth above its body, seemingly curious as they fixed on the very storage core it had just ejected from within itself.

Kamail checked the core’s operational status and, confirming it could be read directly, began injecting magical energy into it. With a faint hum, intricate magical runes quickly appeared across the palm-sized cube’s surface. Then, under Kamail’s deliberate control, a flood of images and data burst forth, forming a series of rapidly updating holographic projections suspended in midair.

“Our time is limited,” Gawain said. “Let’s set aside the environmental monitoring data for now. We can have the tech experts analyze that later. First, let’s focus on the Explorer’s recorded footage—mainly inside the ship. We need to find a path.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Kamail nodded slightly. The holograms adjusted accordingly, shutting down the dizzying streams of data and filtered imaging views. The footage recorded by the Explorer’s crystal was magnified before them. “I’ve pinpointed the Explorer’s recordings from when it first entered the ship’s interior. Starting here, you can see it moving through a corridor…”

The hologram showed a first-person perspective, shorter than an average human’s height, steadily advancing forward. At the edges of the frame, the automaton’s long mechanical limbs moved rhythmically. Ahead stretched a wide, deep corridor. The only movement in the empty scene was the automaton’s limbs stepping forward. Outside the frame, the only sounds were the faint hum from the automaton’s own mechanisms and occasional distant mechanical vibrations echoing from deep within the ship.

Gawain watched intently, then said in a low voice, “Fast forward. Mark the next intersection.”

The footage accelerated. The Explorer sped down the corridor toward a fork at the end. The background hum sharpened oddly with the speed-up, then returned to normal as the automaton entered the next connecting passage, before accelerating again…

The group watched carefully as the Explorer’s recordings unfolded. The ship was so vast that even its shallow connecting corridors were enormous. Traveling from one facility to another took the little magical machine quite some time. Most of the footage was simply the automaton “making its way” through the ship.

Of course, during this journey, it captured many details about the ship’s internal structure—details that would require time later to analyze thoroughly.

Suddenly, as the footage sped up again, a faint, unusual sound caught Gawain’s ear.

It was so faint and elusive it almost blended into the background hum. Yet Gawain’s sharp senses detected it immediately. He waved his hand, and Modril, standing beside him, spoke in unison, “Stop!”

“You heard it too?” Kamail quickly paused the playback. Gawain glanced at the serious expression on the seasoned adventurer’s face, surprised. “You heard it as well?”

“Seems so,” Modril said, eyes wide. “There was a strange noise just now… buried in the background hum. It was abrupt and unlike any other sound we’ve heard before.”

“Rewind,” Gawain instructed Kamail. “It was right after the Explorer entered that corridor marked by green lights. Turn up the volume.”

Without hesitation, Kamail obeyed. The footage rewound precisely to the moment where both Gawain and Modril had heard the “noise.” The scene resumed playing normally, and everyone perked up, listening intently to every subtle sound the automaton had recorded.

Amid the low hum, a faint, distorted noise emerged—definitely real, and clearly not from the automaton itself, nor the usual mechanical sounds of the ship’s operation.

“It’s hard to make out… but the pattern is strange. It almost sounds like… a melody?” Amber’s sharp, pointed ears twitched in the air. Her face was cautious, even a little frightened. “I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but I think I heard someone singing… it’s… creepy…”

Gawain’s gaze fell on Amber’s twitching ears. He frowned, looking seriously at Kamail. “Can you clarify the sound? Clean up the noise.”

“I’ll do my best,” Kamail hesitated, placing both hands carefully on the intricate storage core. Manipulating the magical energy flow inside, he added cautiously, “The effect might be limited—the Explorer automaton’s ‘hearing’ isn’t very sensitive, and that faint sound is completely mixed into the background hum. I’ll try to make it clearer.”

Under Kamail’s control, the footage returned to the start of that segment and played again. The processed sound was indeed a bit clearer, but the strange noise remained buried in the low hum, indistinct and hard to separate. Just as Gawain was about to ask for another pass, Amber suddenly turned her head, listening intently, then motioned for silence.

Her pointed ears twitched sharply. Though she lacked true elven blood, as a product of the most advanced bioengineering from the Gondor era—designated “Android No. 36”—her focused perception rivaled that of any elf.

Everyone fell silent. The only sounds were the hoarse, muffled hums recorded by the Explorer automaton, interwoven with a faint noise that resembled a ballad. Amber listened for a long moment, then softly began to sing—her voice halting and slightly off-key:

“…The hollow wind… no birds fly across the sky anymore… A sentinel has gone mad… A sentinel has gone mad…”

Her quiet chant echoed through the corridor, dead silent for 1.8 million years. It was off-key, eerie, and chilling.

Victoria’s eyes widened instantly. “Amber, what are you singing?”

“That noise mixed in the hum—it’s a voice singing, repeating these lyrics,” Amber’s ears twitched as she looked up. “There are a few more lines, but I can only make out this fragment clearly.”

“I’ve heard this song… from Belsethia,” Gawain said suddenly, his expression grave enough to startle Daniel and Melita. “It’s an ancient Silver Elf lullaby, telling the story of a sentinel far from home during the pioneering era, driven mad by endless waiting, descending into hallucinations. But… why would it be here?”

“A Silver Elf lullaby?” Melita’s eyes widened instinctively. “Are their lullabies really that intense?”

“That’s not the point,” Gawain said solemnly. “The key is the sentinel—and why the Explorer automaton recorded this melody aboard this ancient Pathfinder ship. Kamail, where exactly was the automaton when it recorded this song? Can you deduce the location from the footage?”

“I’ve already started analyzing,” Kamail replied quickly. Holding the storage core in one hand, he gestured with the other. A large magical projection unfolded before him, tracing corridors, intersections, and chambers in pale blue light—an internal map he’d sketched from the automaton’s footage. A bright red block marked the section where the automaton “heard” the ballad. “Right here.”

Gawain waved his hand decisively. “Let’s move.”

The group immediately followed Gawain and Kamail, swiftly navigating the ancient Pathfinder ship’s deep, endless corridors and connecting gates. They hurried along the safe route identified by the Explorer automaton. The footsteps of these unexpected visitors echoed sharply through the million-year silent ship.

Before long, they reached the connecting passage Kamail had marked.

The spacious, well-lit corridor was deserted. Soft light spilled from ancient fixtures, and the low mechanical hum of machinery behind alloy walls occasionally resonated. Beyond that, no other sound could be heard.

Even Amber perked up her ears but shook her head after a few seconds. “No, I don’t hear anything.”

Everyone exchanged uneasy glances. In this empty, abandoned ship, nearly all felt a creeping chill slowly spreading from their extremities. Mary, who had barely spoken all along, whispered, “Maybe the song isn’t continuous…”

“Or,” Kamail said in a low voice, “the alchemical automaton didn’t actually hear a ‘sound.’ Its recording device isn’t a true ‘ear.’ Sometimes it records certain energy fluctuations as ‘sound signals.’ Many mysterious interferences in magical recordings come from this.”

“Not necessarily a ‘sound’…” Gawain frowned, quietly activating his magical sight. Yet in the empty corridor, he detected no unusual magical fluctuations.

Then, a sudden impulse struck him, as if the ship’s silent system had sent a signal. Instinctively, he looked toward a fork at the corridor’s far end.

“What’s over there?” he asked Kamail.

“Unknown,” Kamail shook his head. “The Explorer automaton never reached that point. This is already deep inside the ship. After exploring this corridor, it turned back.”

Gawain stared in that direction for a moment, then said quietly, “Maybe we should go check it out.”

After a brief pause, the group passed down the corridor and into the fork. Before them stood a tightly sealed alloy gate.

Gawain frowned, staring at the firmly closed door.

They had passed through countless gates and connecting passages on their way here. Every door along the route had been open, as if the ship’s former controllers had deliberately disabled all security before leaving. But here—this was the only locked door.

There had to be something special behind it.

“What do we do now? The door’s locked,” Amber said, glancing at Gawain and then at the alloy gate before them, a troubled look crossing her face. “Honestly, this is beyond my skill set… I have no idea how to open this thing.”

“Even if you were a level ten locksmith, you couldn’t crack an interstellar-era security lock like this,” Gawain shook his head gently. “Can you try Shadow Step to get inside?”

“Just tried that—no luck,” Amber replied regretfully, shaking her head. “God knows how the Voyagers’ tech works… This door isn’t just sealed in the physical world; it’s got a corresponding barrier in the Shadow Realm too. It’s like it exists simultaneously across every ‘layer’ of this world—I wouldn’t be surprised if even elemental beings couldn’t get through.”

Gawain said nothing. He stepped forward quietly and tentatively placed his hand on a nondescript silver panel beside the door.

This was experience he’d gained in the Tower of the Reversal Tide.

The blank silver panel lit up, quickly displaying buttons and an interactive interface. But the ship’s main system remained silent, showing no response to the Voyager identification signal Gawain carried. The heavy alloy door stayed firmly shut, with no sign of opening. On the panel, a single line of text scrolled continuously: “Critical system failure. Main control room sealed.”

No one but Gawain could understand the words flashing on the panel. Kamail and the others had never seen anything like the scenes from the Tower of the Reversal Tide. Seeing the panel light up, Daniel instinctively asked, “Is it open?”

“No. There’s a critical failure in the system. This door can’t be opened,” Gawain said, shaking his head with a hint of regret. “Maybe we should look for another entrance.”

“What if we try knocking?” Amber couldn’t help but suggest a half-baked idea. “Like, punch it once—sometimes when the magic net terminals glitch, a couple of knocks fix it. Six or seven times out of ten, it works…”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Since when is banging on something at a forty-five-degree angle a repair method?” Gawain gave the daydreaming half-elf a sideways glance. “This isn’t some simple magic net terminal. This is advanced interstellar tech.”

“Just two knocks, please…” Amber whispered, tapping lightly on the silver alloy panel. “Anyway, this thing’s already…”

Before Gawain could say anything, a faint “click” suddenly came from the tightly sealed alloy gate. Then, without a sound, it slid open to both sides.

All eyes immediately turned to Amber—including Gawain’s—and every gaze was filled with astonishment.

“Don’t… don’t look at me!” Amber shrank her neck and protested. “I have no idea how that happened! I just tapped it twice!”

(End of chapter)