Chapter 1382: The Engraving
The ancient observatory wasn’t far from the frontline base. Philip’s legion had already secured a foothold in the area for several days. While the engineers erected purification devices and sentry turrets, they also leveled a temporary hardened road between the observatory and the base. Gawain, Amber, Diana, and a few technical experts from both Typhon and Cecil soon arrived near the high ground where the observatory stood—a massive structure that had endured since the ancient days of Gondor.
The entire facility was now sealed off by the military. Within a hundred meters of the observatory, a fence made of alloy and concrete stakes had been erected. Atop the fence were simple shield generators and arrays of lightning runes, creating a thin protective barrier around the area. Outside the shield, electric sparks danced erratically. A squad of soldiers had been stationed here for the past three days, manning two overlapping firepoints that could lock down the high ground facing the wasteland. Yet, in all that time, no aberrations or monsters had come near.
“Those creatures seem to actively avoid this place,” Philip explained. “At least the wild ones never come within half a kilometer of the high ground. We also found no signs of monster intrusion or damage inside the observatory. Experts suspect that some low-frequency energy emitted deep within the observatory might be repelling them, though they can’t pinpoint the exact mechanism. Still, to be safe, I set up these defenses.”
Gawain nodded slightly, then turned to Diana, who had disembarked with him. The former guardian of the Viplandon Observatory, this “iron soldier” was staring intently at the observatory. Her eyes—made of high-precision artificial crystal and bionic shells—showed no emotion, but her gaze was serious. Was she recalling something?
Gawain wasn’t sure how to read the expression of a “machine maiden.” After all, he wasn’t Rosetta Augustus. So he casually asked, “Ms. Diana, does seeing the observatory bring anything back to you?”
“…I vaguely remember how it used to look. When I left, it stood just like this. Back then, the disaster hadn’t spread this far yet. There was a small forest nearby and a lush hillside,” Diana said softly, a hint of nostalgia in her voice. “My memories… are fragmented, especially those from seven hundred years ago. Only scattered pieces surface. But the image of the observatory standing under the blue sky—that I remember clearly. At that time…”
She hesitated, as if trying to place something, then pointed toward a spot near the observatory. “I used to wait there every day for sunset, then patrol around the main building until sunrise, when I’d return to that spot to hand over to the daytime guard. But there was never any real danger near the observatory. The empire had no bandits, no monsters, and even the more dangerous beasts had been hunted to extinction because their meat was so delicious. Still, important facilities needed guards, so sturdy, low-paid ‘units’ like us were the perfect fit for those necessary posts…”
Listening to the iron soldier’s reflective memories, Gawain noticed her expression remained calm throughout. Surprised, he said, “Sounds like you miss those days… I thought the mages who programmed you didn’t give you such complex thoughts. I always imagined ‘iron soldiers’ as cold and rigid.”
“My personality has been adjusted over the past centuries to better fit the acceptance and aesthetic preferences of ordinary people,” Diana replied evenly. “Besides, models like me, serving non-military departments, have more flexible personality templates. We can develop richer, more normal emotions to reduce people’s resistance. After all, humans are emotionally delicate and mentally complex. When faced with an entity very similar to themselves but still different, they tend to feel uneasy…”
Gawain immediately understood—this was the uncanny valley theory. He hadn’t expected the Gondor iron engineers to have studied this so thoroughly when designing the iron soldiers.
Just as his mind wandered, Diana continued, “…So when I saw your soldiers getting along so well with a tentacle that had just emerged from underground, I was truly shocked. I even felt a kind of reverence…”
Gawain: “…”
He felt this was a completely different matter, but worried that correcting her might lead the conversation into even stranger territory. So he decisively steered the topic back to business. “We can save the nostalgia for later. Let’s go inside this ancient facility now. General Philip has already sent people to inspect the interior. The structure is still very solid; we can enter safely.”
Diana nodded and strode directly toward the observatory’s entrance, her steps light and familiar, as if this short distance was deeply ingrained in her artificial muscles. Gawain and Amber quickly followed with the others. They soon entered the wide, long-abandoned hall inside the observatory.
Previous exploration teams had left emergency lighting in the hall. Bright magestone lamps banished the gloom that once shrouded this ancient place. Amber, however, seemed a bit unsettled by the brightness, whispering beside Gawain, “Isn’t exploring ancient ruins supposed to be pitch black? I’m not used to it being so bright…”
“Does this bring back memories of your job?” Gawain glanced at the half-elf. “Are you going to need a coffin in the room to get into character?”
“…No, but when you crawled out of that coffin back then, it gave me a serious psychological scar…”
The two bantered half-jokingly, but their eyes never stopped scanning the old, abandoned devices and any valuable marks on the walls and ceiling. Philip, who had come along, explained the situation: “All movable items have been carefully secured in the base’s safe storage. But many traces can’t be moved—like the characters on the walls and fragile fragments. For those, the experts only took images or magical imprints, then left them in place… Ms. Diana? Did you notice something?”
Philip suddenly realized Diana wasn’t paying attention to his briefing. Since entering the hall, she had been wandering around, lost in thought and memories. Now she stopped abruptly before a wall, staring blankly at the mottled marks. She seemed deeply absorbed.
Gawain noticed Diana’s unusual behavior. He had planned to glance around the hall before heading to the sealed upper observatory, but now he felt a sudden urge. “Did you remember something?”
“There are marks on this wall,” Diana said thoughtfully, pointing. “Did you notice? These engravings…”
Philip took a closer look, hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, we noticed some markings here before. They’re not text, more like part of a pattern. Experts think it’s a fragment of decorative relief…”
“No, this isn’t relief,” Diana shook her head. She reached out and gently traced the wall. One of the accompanying scholars whispered nervously, “Please be careful. They’re very fragile and might not withstand…”
Diana ignored the warning. Her fingers lightly brushed the ancient, mottled marks, then, almost unconsciously, she began sketching on a weathered, flaked section nearby, as if filling in the missing parts of the image. Amber’s eyes widened as she watched the marks and Diana’s finger movements, gradually discerning several crucial dots, lines radiating between them, and an outer ring marking a boundary.
Suddenly, Amber nudged Gawain’s arm and whispered just loud enough for him to hear, “It’s that pattern!”
Gawain froze, then realized what Amber meant. This was intelligence secretly passed down from the Typhon Empire’s upper echelons—not exactly top secret, but known only to a few. Diana, the Augustus family’s maid chief, had a strange habit: she unconsciously repeated a mysterious pattern wherever she went—on palace walls, floors, even on passing servants’ clothes. Whenever she remembered, she’d instinctively draw it. The pattern consisted of many dots, lines radiating between them, and a circle representing a boundary.
And now Diana was drawing that very pattern—etched right here on the walls of the Viplandon Observatory!
Gawain couldn’t show how familiar he was with this trivial palace secret, so he casually asked, “Ms. Diana? What are you doing? You seem to be drawing a pattern… Does it have any special meaning?”
“I don’t know… I only know this pattern is deeply imprinted in my core programming. Some ancient directive keeps reinforcing it. Sometimes I zone out, and when I come to, I find I’ve left these marks somewhere. It’s even caused trouble for those around me. I never expected… it came from here.”
As she spoke, the black-haired maid chief gently touched the wall marks again, her expression suddenly shifting. “And these marks were made after I left the Viplandon Observatory!”
Gawain was stunned, instantly grasping the weight of her words. “Wait, you’re saying these marks were carved after you left Viplandon? So after the magical tide broke out? Someone survived here and left these traces?”
“Not necessarily,” Amber quickly interjected. “After all, when Diana left, the magical tide hadn’t arrived yet, right? Maybe she left, and those who stayed behind hurried to carve this pattern on the wall before the tide hit—that would be before the outbreak…”
Amber’s words, though often brash and oddly reasoned, made a certain sense here. But Diana shook her head. “That’s impossible. These marks must have been made after the magical tide broke out, probably between fifteen and twenty-five years afterward, because…”
As Diana spoke, one of her eyes suddenly changed. A subtle structure inside her eyeball seemed to activate, revealing a lattice-like crystalline pattern deep within her iris. After a few seconds, the eye returned to normal—clearly, she was deliberately demonstrating some special ability.
“I can analyze the time differences in the peeling and damage of paint and building materials on different sections of the wall,” she explained. “Within a thousand years, the margin of error is minimal.”
“Holy crap,” Amber gasped, eyes wide. “The stuff from your Númenor era is seriously impressive…”
She then stared intently at the marks on the wall, turning her head. “So that means, even a decade or so after the Cataclysm completely destroyed the Númenor Empire, someone was still active inside this observatory—and they left this ‘mark’ on the wall!?”
“I don’t know…” Diana’s tone grew serious. “But I’m certain this isn’t something a mindless aberration could have done. Yet I also can’t believe anyone could have survived under those conditions… There were no strong enough defenses near the Viplanton Observatory, and the scholars and officials inside didn’t have the power to withstand the Cataclysm. And…”
Her voice faltered slightly. “And if this pattern was carved here after I left, why do I know about it? Why is it etched so deeply into my core memory?”
“The pattern was indeed carved after you left,” Gawain said from the side, “but before that, you and the people in this observatory must have known about it. This pattern must have meant something significant to you all—so much so that even after your memory malfunctioned, you still held onto it tightly. And the survivors here—assuming there were any—would have chosen this pattern as their final message after being trapped for over a decade.”
“Is it really possible someone survived the Cataclysm and lived alone in an isolated observatory for ten or twenty years?” Amber whispered, unable to hide her disbelief.
At that moment, Philip’s voice cut in: “It’s not impossible. The dark priests of the End of All Things cult have survived in the wastelands until today. Though they paid a terrible price, it shows that under certain conditions, normal beings can survive in the wasteland without relying on purification devices. And this observatory… it seems to be protected by some kind of power. Its main structure is intact, unlike other Númenor facilities that were melted away by deep blue magic. In fact, the upper level still has an operational star-gazing platform.”
“The upper level is still running…” Gawain frowned. Suddenly, he regarded the still-functioning observatory with a new level of seriousness—and a hint of caution. Then he turned to Diana. “Looks like we need to go check it out.”
(By the way, everyone knows about the Honor of Kings collaborative novel project, right? My short story “Sea of Storms” is now live! It’s part of the Honor of Kings co-creation novel series and can be found on the Honor of Kings Miao Bi Plan platform. It’s a story about Kuang Tie—though I’ve never actually won with him…)
(The End of this chapter)