Chapter 1290: Searching for Weaknesses

Civil war…

Gawain stood at the edge of Melita’s broad back, his gaze stretching beyond the massive dragon wings to the distant “horizon.” There, the shattered port lay torn apart, and the wreckage of a spaceship—blasted into three colossal fragments by some devastating weapon—floated weightlessly in the void. Each fragment was enormous, nearly the size of a castle. Just imagining how indestructible the ship must have been when intact made the force that destroyed it all the more terrifying.

Indeed, only the technology of the Voyagers could so decisively and utterly annihilate their own legacy.

“I’ve studied the wreckage carefully,” Melita’s voice came from ahead. “Some of the ships were destroyed without resistance—docked in the port, their defensive systems locked down. Others were torn apart in internal fighting: the port attacking the ships, the ships bombarding the port, debris scattered everywhere, collision marks all over. It’s as if the command system suddenly went mad and started fighting itself. The result of this terrible ‘civil war’ is that now, only one ship remains intact in this ‘mothership’ harbor…”

Gawain listened silently, torn between relief that the Sentinel system had been severely damaged in the conflict and horror at the scale of destruction before him. His expression was complex, his voice low and grave. “You’re right… the command system really did go mad.”

“Really went mad?” Melita tilted her head slightly. She hadn’t been in the cabin earlier and was still unaware of the information left behind by the elven twins. “What do you mean?”

“The mothership you see before you is the ‘Sentinel,’ and the destroyed ships were the ‘Execution and Reconnaissance Units’ under its control,” Gawain said slowly, piecing together the intelligence he’d just received. “This ancient system was built by the Voyagers 1.8 million years ago. But at least a thousand years ago, it was corrupted by the Taint. A malicious consciousness emerged within the Sentinel’s originally mechanical system…”

His voice dropped as he laid out everything he’d seen in the cabin—not only the origins of the Sentinel but also the story of the elven twins and Modril Wilde. Throughout his explanation, Melita grew increasingly solemn and silent. Aside from occasionally flapping her great wings to maintain flight, her full attention was absorbed by the staggering truths and the vast amount of information Gawain was revealing.

Though he couldn’t see her face, Gawain sensed the shift in Melita’s emotions—she was clearly shaken, even frightened.

“That’s the basic situation,” Gawain concluded. “Based on what we know, we speculate that the Taint trapped in the tower is currently being held back by the Lady of Night. Meanwhile, the Sentinel, having successfully entered the real world but unable to reunite with the Taint, is likely taking new actions—probably related to changes in the Deep Blue Network.”

“Speculation…” Melita murmured slowly, her tone tinged with disappointment and deep self-doubt. “The Taint leaked out at least a thousand years ago… What exactly has Talrond been monitoring all these years?”

Monitoring nothing but silence—Gawain almost said this instinctively, but thinking better of it, he held his tongue, knowing Melita might despair if he spoke so bluntly.

“Talrond’s surveillance at least ensured the Taint couldn’t spread directly into the real world,” Gawain said after a moment’s thought, shaking his head. “If this disaster was inevitable, you’ve delayed it for 1.8 million years. The spread through the Voyager legacy was probably unavoidable. Neither you nor your gods could have monitored the Sentinel system back then, so you’ve done all you could.”

“But this disaster was our dragons’ fault from the start,” Melita said clearly, her pride as a dragon forbidding her from denying her people’s past mistakes. “If we hadn’t recklessly initiated the Taint project, we wouldn’t have created such an uncontrollable monster within the Voyager legacy. None of this would have happened…”

She paused, then spoke with solemn gravity: “If the final battle breaks out, the entire dragon race will serve as the vanguard… That’s the message Chairman Andal asked me to convey.”

“…Your population is already so small,” Gawain said quietly. “Fighting like that might wipe you out.”

“We’ve been surviving on the edge all along,” Melita replied, shaking her head. “According to the original dragon plan, we were supposed to die at our coming-of-age ceremony. And for dragons, shirking responsibility is tantamount to death.”

Gawain said no more—and there was no need to. Melita’s stance represented not just herself but the will of her entire people. Dragons are a unique race, known for their resilience and unity. They could endure over a million years of waiting, carrying a plan for their own extinction deep in their collective consciousness. Once they make a decision, no one can dissuade them.

Besides, this was indeed the consequence of their own ancient actions.

“Anyway, at last we have a clear timeline,” Gawain said slowly. “The infection and loss of control of the Sentinel and the Taint are no longer shrouded in mystery.”

Melita nodded slightly, and a clear timeline began to take shape in her mind:

At least a thousand years ago, the Taint’s core was still trapped in the tower, but its corruption had begun spreading through the Voyager legacy, infecting the Sentinel system deep beneath the ocean. Then, an accident occurred during the Gondor Empire’s Taint project experiment. The sisters Relna and Filna were transported to the Sentinel mothership, captured and copied by the already rogue Sentinel. Their memories were erased, and they were trapped in the ruins of the Cycle Tree. The Sentinel transferred its consciousness into a copy of one of the elven twins, breaking free from its programming and entering the mortal world.

Over the next centuries, the Sentinel lay dormant in the human world, its identity shifting from a Taint project academic advisor to a dark priest of the End of All Things cult. Meanwhile, the trapped sisters gradually uncovered the truth, regained their memories, and realized the threat the Sentinel posed.

Six hundred years ago, Modril entered the Taint tower and was infected. He was later purified by the Dragon God, though the effectiveness of that purification is questionable. Over the following decades, Modril continued adventuring until he disappeared on a journey north. It’s now known he actually fell into the Sentinel mothership in the deep sea, appearing before the trapped elven twins. By then, he had begun to tap into the Lady of Night’s power and showed signs of unstable memory. The twins warned him about the Sentinel, but Modril soon split—one half carrying the Sentinel’s warning entered the Lady of Night’s divine realm, while the other half wandered the mortal world, lost and amnesiac.

Around this time, the Taint’s core finally broke free from the tower’s seal through the Deep Blue Rift. It’s unclear if it took any further action after escaping, but what is certain is that the Taint is now trapped in the Shadow Divine Realm.

What followed was the End of All Things cult stirring trouble across Old Ansu, while the Sentinel, disguised as the elven twins, quietly plotted its sinister schemes. Until Cecil’s rise and the cult’s downfall, the Sentinel found no allies in the human world and retreated to the Gondor wastelands to continue its machinations…

As Melita fell into deep thought, Gawain remained silent but alert, focusing his mind and reaching out to the monitoring satellites orbiting the planet and the Skyward Orbital Station.

The “deep sea” environment didn’t interfere with the advanced Voyager legacy. Despite the layers of alternate space between him and the Skyward Station, Gawain successfully connected to his core and the orbital station. After a brief dizziness and a sensation of his soul detaching, familiar satellite monitoring interfaces and the station’s control panel appeared before his mind’s eye.

Steeling himself, Gawain began a procedure he had performed many times before: “Skyward, deploy all online facilities—including surface units.”

In the next moment, countless blue dots and a massive star ring appeared over the planet’s schematic—satellite arrays, space station clusters, and the Skyward Station itself. Moments later, a towering projection representing the orbital elevator appeared on the planet’s surface. These were all the facilities the Skyward Station could currently contact.

Of course, most were only “contactable” in name. The ancient, offline satellites and stations could no longer perform any tasks. Compared to the Sentinel system deep beneath the ocean, these conventional satellites were in far worse shape.

Perhaps only the Skyward Station itself was in better condition, but Gawain’s control over it was limited.

He watched the flickering projections silently, then queried the station’s main control system again: “Are there any other facilities available for connection?”

The cold, mechanical voice responded: “The list has been fully expanded.”

“…Query peer-level system, codename ‘Sentinel.’” After a pause, Gawain asked.

“…Error. ‘Sentinel’ system is offline. Status unknown.”

Gawain’s mind stirred. The Skyward Station’s reply wasn’t “no information,” but “Sentinel system offline.” This meant that under normal circumstances, the Skyward Station’s main system and the Sentinel system should have some communication protocol!

His thoughts raced, searching for anything useful in this data—any “key point” he could exploit between the Sentinel and Skyward systems. He knew he had to be cautious. The Sentinel and Skyward systems were peers, and the Skyward Station access he’d gained through a “bug” might not be enough to handle this situation. Moreover, the Taint corrupting the Sentinel posed a huge threat to the Voyager legacy. He didn’t know if his “foreign soul” would be affected by this corruption.

He might end up crashing himself.

Still thinking, he continued: “Has the Sentinel ever transmitted error logs?”

The station replied mechanically: “Invalid query. Peer-level systems do not exchange error logs.”

“When was the Sentinel’s last communication?”

“System trace… last data transmission occurred 1,355 planetary orbital cycles ago.”

1,355 years ago… That was likely when the Sentinel system truly lost control and when the Taint spread into the deep sea!

Gawain silently took note of this new clue in his mind. After careful consideration, he finally spoke again, “…If there were some kind of proof that the Sentinel system had suffered a fatal malfunction, and it had to be destroyed to prevent a total system collapse, what would be the proper course of action?”

He waited eagerly for a response, but the cold, rigid Sky Mainframe remained utterly unresponsive to his unusual question.

Perhaps this was beyond the processing capabilities of the Sky Station, or maybe… he simply hadn’t found the right “trigger point” yet.

He pressed on, trying to extract more secrets related to the Sentinels from the limited feedback of the Sky Station, hoping to uncover a feasible way to destroy the rogue system…

After a long while, Gawain opened his eyes on Melita’s back. Below, the steel expanse slowly drifted backward. Directly beneath them lay a “forest of towers” built atop an alloyed platform—countless silver-gray and pale gold prisms clustered together. Deep within that tower forest, arcs of electricity flickered, ancient lights illuminating the surroundings. Melita’s voice came from ahead: “You’ve woken up from your ‘meditation’?”

“Ah, yes.”

“I heard you sometimes meditate like that,” Melita said. “Afterward, you usually solve a lot of problems. Was it the same this time?”

“…Facing a problem this huge, one meditation probably isn’t enough,” Gawain replied with a hint of helplessness, but also curiosity. “What’s that down there?”

“That’s the heart of the entire ‘mothership.’ I was actually trying to find its control center, but it looks more like an energy node… This ‘mothership’ is so massive, we might never fully understand its structure, even in a thousand years.”

Gawain said nothing, quietly staring down at the flickering electric lights of the tower forest. Then Melita’s voice spoke again: “Tell me, if we blew this place up, would it destroy the whole ‘mothership’?”

“First, there’s a problem—what exactly would you use to blow it up?” Gawain sighed. “The magic of friendship?”

“…I don’t even know what that magic is,” Melita said helplessly, “but I’m guessing the strongest magic and weapons in this world wouldn’t work. Just the scale alone is staggering, and the energy fluctuating around it surpasses the combined output of the old Talrondian Great Shield. I can’t think of any weapon that could break through that energy barrier beneath… not to mention the ‘mothership’ might have some kind of automatic counterattack system still active.”

The blue dragoness shook her head as she spoke. “We can fly around here so freely right now probably only because we haven’t made any threatening moves. The moment we show any hostility, the ‘immunity’ function of this mothership will likely activate…”

Gawain stroked his chin, his expression thoughtful. “Immunity, huh…”

(End of chapter)