Chapter 1437: Suddenly, So Suddenly

Inside the command hall of Solin, Beltira stared expressionlessly at the holographic projection before her. Yet her consciousness spread throughout the entire facility—nothing happening here, no message flowing through the communication channels, escaped her notice.

Her mimetic avatar’s face betrayed almost no emotion, but Beltira knew her heart was far from calm. To converse with a completely unknown civilization, one living on a planet light-years away, was an unprecedented experience. Just thinking about the historical significance behind this interstellar dialogue made every leaf on her branches tremble faintly in the treetop breeze.

Those following the developments remotely must be feeling the same.

“New text compiled. Encoding complete. Sending to Antavian.”
“Confirmation received from Antavian. Text delivered. Awaiting response.”

The report came from the command seat, but Beltira remained still, calm as a plant, her gaze fixed on the hologram. A faintly glowing line of text appeared:

Decipherer: “If cooperation between us fails, what will you do? Do you have some… contingency plan to address the observation point four light-years away? This question arises purely from our curiosity.”

After that, a long stretch of static filled the air. The “Noy” seemed to be deliberating how to answer. Four light-years apart, across the vast starry sea, Beltira could not see what was happening on the other side, but she couldn’t help but imagine the “aliens” engaged in this conversation…

Did they, like the Solin command center, gather many expert teams? Did they debate fiercely, trying to interpret this group calling themselves the “Loran Alliance” across the stars? Did they feel joy and tension like the mortals of this planet?

Had the “Noy” society been stirred by this sudden contact? Were their leaders watching this cross-time-and-space dialogue?

Beltira slowly lifted her head. Her “eyes” pierced through the thick wooden roof and layers of leaves above. From the perspective of a towering tree, the vast sky hung like a giant screen overhead. Yet even this seemingly boundless sky was just a thin, unremarkable atmosphere enveloping the planet’s surface. Beyond it lay the immense cosmos—vast beyond ordinary comprehension.

Four light-years. A scale that instantly renders all earthly conflicts, gains, losses, life, and death insignificant. Long ago, during the Gondor era, mages grasped the concept of light speed. Yet until Gondor’s fall, the “light-year” remained a mere conceptual unit—a hopelessly vast measure. People then couldn’t even imagine how to travel such distances, so these incomprehensible things were relegated to “divine power”…

Now, thinking back, the gods’ poor mental state on this planet likely owes much to these so-called “miracles” misattributed to divine will. Once ignorant mortals blindly pressed forward, but when faced with the inexplicable, they irresponsibly blamed the gods. And what could the gods do? They didn’t understand either, so they went mad…

Without the Theocratic Council, without recent revelations about the workings of the gods, this blindness would surely have led to an apocalypse no less devastating than the Mage Tide.

A faint hum suddenly snapped Beltira out of her wandering thoughts. She immediately looked back at the hologram in the hall’s center, where a line of text was slowly appearing, translated into the common tongue—

Noy: “Yes, we have a contingency plan—or rather, your response is the real surprise. From the start, we planned our self-rescue assuming ‘no other intelligent civilization within range can assist.’

“Many, many years ago, we dispatched ‘Observers’—they journey to the nearest suitable measurement point from our planet and transmit the Mage Tide readings back to our homeworld…

“To this day, the Observers have traveled through space for 126 years, but this four-light-year journey is not yet complete… They are now decelerating, but still some distance from the designated observation point.”

The text stopped moving. An unusual silence fell over the hall. Beltira’s eyes widened as she grasped the implication behind those words.

The next moment, Gawain’s voice suddenly came through the comm device: “They can conduct space travel—this civilization has passed its ‘rite of passage.’ Begin questioning immediately.”

Far south, Gawain had risen from his chair. Even Amber, sitting beside him, stared wide-eyed at the arcane network terminal on the desk. When the “Noy” revealed their “primitive plan” had been underway for 126 years before today’s contact, what shook Gawain most was their ability to travel between stars.

To leave a planet and step into space—on this world where the Loran continent lies—this act marks mortal civilization’s complete break from the gods’ chains and its coming of age. According to the Theocratic Council’s studies on divine mechanics and the history of every intelligent species on this planet, this process is no exception.

As long as other planets follow the same cosmic laws as Loran, and their intelligent species’ logic isn’t so alien as to be incomprehensible, then even in distant star systems, aliens must undergo a similar “primitive worship—birth of gods—mutual shackles—coming of age” cycle. At the final stage, they face a choice: “rebellion failure” or “civilization survival.”

This is no simple process. The dragons of Talrond have already proven the heavy price of a misstep. But experts at the Theocratic Council believe there is a less costly, more achievable path—if one takes the right road early in breaking the chains, crossing the rite of passage at lower cost is possible. Yet on this planet, no such example has ever been recorded. The Alliance nations can only grope forward along this path.

Back at Solin’s control hall, the Decipherers began preparing questions for the “Noy.” Gawain, controlling his sudden excitement, slowly sat back down. He took a deep breath, feeling his heartbeat steady, and glanced again at the still-warm printed sheet before him. Between those brief lines lay the story of another civilization, struggling to survive for centuries just like the nations of Loran.

A 1,400-year-long interstellar broadcast, an Observer traveling through space for 126 years… This “Noy” people seemed as resilient as all beings on the Loran continent. As the poem left by the pioneers warned, they had not succumbed to the illusion of a peaceful eternal night.

And those time scales—“1,400 years,” “126 years”—like the “light-years” before, had already been converted by the Decipherers and Solin’s computational nodes into Loran’s units. What Gawain saw was data already translated into familiar terms.

Centuries ago, Sir Scott Prandin at the Viplandon Observatory had been a scholar decoding alien “dictionaries.” The “Noy” had sent a “basic knowledge base” referencing standard stellar flickers as a “standard time scale.” In this, the pioneers had paved the way for future generations.

The printer clicked softly, then the gears began turning. Amber whispered instinctively, “Something else is coming through!”

Gawain controlled his excitement and pulled the paper free as soon as it emerged. It contained the latest exchange between Solin’s Decipherers and the “Noy”:

Decipherer: “We have some questions that may seem bold, but they will help deepen mutual understanding—does your world have ‘gods’?”

Noy: “Yes, of course. We have our own religions and belief systems—looks like you have gods on your side as well?”

Decipherer: “Yes, we do. Second question: when you sent Observers four light-years into space, did it not cause your gods to lose control?”

After this question, a long silence followed again. The printout showed a “waiting” mark and a string of ellipses. Near the end of the page, Gawain finally saw the “Noy” reply:

“The Observers we sent out are our gods.”

This time, not only did Gawain leap to his feet, but Rosetta August and Belsethia Morningstar—who had been silently observing the communication—also rose in shock.

It was as if their worldview shattered and reformed in an instant. The natural laws they had taken for granted were overturned. Even usually stern-faced Rosetta stared wide-eyed. The Solin control hall fell utterly silent. This earth-shattering truth stole everyone’s words, until the quiet was broken by Tyr’s voice from the side:

“Antavian reports: the core temperature of the faster-than-light communication array is rising sharply—the hardware is reaching its limit!”

Gawain snapped back to reality.

Antavian’s FTL communication array was in poor condition at best—barely functional. Though the Sirens had optimized its operation, switched to a lower-load, low-frequency communication mode, and offloaded much of the encoding to Solin’s computational center, this only delayed the inevitable burnout of the main antenna.

In fact, it was a miracle it had lasted this long. But the conversation with the “Noy” had brought so many shocking revelations that Gawain had subconsciously forgotten this.

“Indicate the imminent communication cutoff, and ask one more question!” Gawain spoke rapidly. “Inquire about their relationship with their gods!”

Inside Solin’s control hall, the Decipherers compiled and converted the text at unprecedented speed. The data transmission system promptly sent the encoded message to Antavian. After a brief delay, the inquiry shot through starspace, a ripple of information traveling faster than light across the stars.

Decipherer: “Due to cooling requirements, our communication system will temporarily shut down for maintenance and will restart soon. Before then, we wish to understand: what is your relationship or mode of interaction with your gods?”

Almost the instant the question was sent, Tyr’s voice rang out again: “Main antenna burned out. Faster-than-light communication array offline.”

“Turn the listening antenna sensitivity to maximum,” Belltila shouted loudly from the control hall. “Notify the Ancestor Peak listening station to assist in capturing the signal—do not miss any reply from the ‘Noyans’!”

Although only Antavian’s faster-than-light communication array could send signals outward, the listening stations set up in other regions were still able to receive communication signals. Now that the main antenna had been destroyed, the Alliance had temporarily lost the ability to initiate contact, but at least… there was still a chance to hear a response from “them.”

Each passing second felt like an eternity. Everyone—whether the technicians in the Thorin control center, the three imperial leaders in the capitals of the Three Empires, or the fairy engineers at Ancestor Peak—held their breath in silence, as if even a single exhale might disrupt the invisible signals drifting through the stars. The tense atmosphere lingered until the indicator light in front of Belltila, representing the main antenna’s reception, began to blink.

“Main antenna has received a signal!” “The Decoders are decrypting!”

Moments later, the Noyan reply finally appeared before everyone’s eyes—

“We have achieved coexistence with our gods, living together on our homeworld.”

In a study lined with blue velvet carpet, Gawain slowly set down the papers in his hand and leaned back in his high-backed chair, speaking thoughtfully, “It seems… this is the answer.”

“‘Achieved coexistence’…” Amber frowned, muttering to herself, “They used the phrase ‘achieved’… does that mean their relationship with their gods used to be… ‘dangerous’ too? That it took some effort to reach this better state? And what do you think they mean by ‘coexistence’ exactly?”

“Any guess other than from the Noyans themselves is just speculation,” Gawain shook his head gently. “We already have enough information to ponder for a long time.”

At that moment, Belltila’s voice came through the arcane network terminal: “We’ve received another call… The Noyans seem to want to confirm whether we’ve gone offline.”

Gawain’s lips twitched slightly. At that moment, he felt a faint, awkward tension spreading through the cosmos…

“Keep listening and recording,” after a brief pause, he sighed helplessly. “We can’t respond right now.”

As he spoke, he glanced up at another communication interface where Tyr was visible.

“How’s it going over at Antavian—”

“We’re fixing it, we’re fixing it,” Tyr waved his hands quickly before Gawain could finish. “High Witch Hathaway has already crawled inside the main antenna.”

“…Alright then, good luck to you all.”

(End of chapter)