Chapter 1439: Ancient Echoes
At just the right moment and in the right setting, High Lord finally laid out the long-pondered vision that had been brewing in his mind for years—an idea he had mulled over ever since the inception of the Divine Authority Council. Back then, he knew full well that the council was nowhere near ready to confront such matters, those ultimate questions about the final order between mortals and gods.
But now, with the sudden contact from an alien civilization—a “Pioneer” who seemed to have already broken free from their chains—High Lord realized that some conversations needed to happen ahead of time.
To be honest, he wasn’t entirely sure his ideas were correct. The future he envisioned might seem utterly unfathomable to most people today—too far ahead, even he wasn’t certain it could be realized. Yet the arrival of the Noyans and the cryptic hints they dropped during their exchanges gave him a faint but growing confidence that his line of thought might be on the right track.
“This sounds… like an incredible future,” Belsethia finally broke the silence around the round table after a long pause. “It’s less a vision of the future and more like a depiction of some imagined paradise…”
“But this ‘imagined paradise’ has a foundation,” Rosetta Augustus added, breaking her own silence. “Once the chains of faith binding mortals and gods are completely severed, we must seriously consider what becomes of the gods. If, at that point, we continue to leave divine seats vacant, keep the core secrets of the Divine Authority Council hidden from the public, and conceal those ‘Old Gods’ who have long since lost their divine status, we might ironically be committing the very mistake we’ve worked so hard to avoid…”
“Yes, the mistake of ‘cultivating a mysticism-driven ideology,’” High Lord nodded, picking up Rosetta’s thread. “And what I’m describing isn’t purely hypothetical. In fact… signs of this are already emerging.”
“Signs?” Belsethia’s voice held surprise. “In what way?”
High Lord paused, a strange expression crossing his face. “Do you know what the Goddess of Magic, Mylmina, has been up to lately?”
Rosetta and Belsethia exchanged glances, then asked in unison, “What is she doing?”
High Lord didn’t answer directly. Instead, he brought up another matter. “Filmworks Studios is producing a series of films about the Goddess of Magic. It starts with the ‘Universal Factor X’—the initial spark of magical research—then traces the goddess’s birth from the collective consciousness, her growth, and finally her self-sacrifice to free mortal mages from the shackles of magical authority. Of course, there’s artistic license involved, but this will be the first mythological drama to portray a deity as the protagonist, told in a biographical style. Every artistic choice serves a purpose.”
“The Divine Authority Council is providing technical and financial support. I believe this film will greatly accelerate the popularization of the ‘ideology concept’ among the masses. Its entry point is perfect—the mage community’s faith in the Goddess of Magic is more open than any other group, and most mages don’t even consciously consider themselves believers. Ordinary people have no direct contact with traditional magic, so the public will be very receptive to a ‘divine biography,’ and any resistance will be diluted by the sheer size of the audience.”
“Filmworks is also adjusting the presentation to make it ‘feel like an emotionless documentary,’” High Lord continued, “to lessen the impression that it’s eroding faith.”
Listening to High Lord’s explanation, Rosetta nodded slightly. “I saw this in the council’s internal files, but I didn’t pay much attention to it… Wait, are you saying that lady herself—”
“She is the ‘technical support’ the council provided to the production team,” High Lord chuckled. “Initially, Filmworks approached the council for detailed information on the Goddess of Magic to complete the film. What happened next, I’m not entirely sure, but the end result was Lady Tower creating an avatar and going directly to the set. Of course, she took all necessary precautions.”
Rosetta and Belsethia exchanged stunned looks—they hadn’t expected it to be handled that way.
“This might be some kind of ‘beginning,’” High Lord’s voice pulled them back from their surprise. “The film is a start, Lady Tower’s involvement a beneficial experiment. Unlike the council’s usual conservative stance, this is an active, proactive attempt at ‘ideological intervention,’ an extension of the ‘secularization of divine authority’ I mentioned before. If it works as intended… I think the kind of ‘coexistence’ the Noyans spoke of won’t be so unimaginable for us.”
The two imperial rulers before High Lord fell silent, as if mentally tracing the future’s trajectory or grappling with images too vast to comprehend. After a long pause, the Silver Empress whispered, “I find myself hoping that day will come soon…”
“That day may arrive sooner than expected,” High Lord nodded gently. “The Noyans’ appearance will inevitably impact society, just as the wars in the wastelands accelerated the Alliance’s order. Contact with an alien civilization will profoundly influence the ‘ideologies’ on this planet. We should see it as an opportunity…”
Deep beneath the Well of Deep Blue, a continuous low hum softly echoed through the core control chamber. Countless ancient devices operated at full power.
Bright lights from the ceiling illuminated row after row of neatly arranged metal pillars, their indicator lights flickering rapidly as they transmitted and transformed vast streams of data. At the heart of the “Ophelia Matrix,” a figure sat silently on a pale golden throne, expressionless as she observed the computing units before her.
For many years, the Ophelia Matrix had not manifested in a physical “vessel” within this underground facility. She had resisted such embodiment, as it often caused dissonance in her self-awareness and reduced the matrix’s operational efficiency. But recently, she had crafted a body nearly identical to the historical Ophelia Norton, even placing the main connection device at the matrix’s center—a bold experiment that surprised even herself. What surprised her more was that the experience wasn’t unpleasant.
Here she sat quietly, in a vessel, calmly observing her own “core.” This novel perspective even struck her as… interesting.
“Data slice 12665 processing complete, now integrating with remaining datasets for comparison.”
The automated system’s prompt echoed through the chamber. Ophelia blinked softly and turned her gaze toward a direction in the hall. An iron soldier stepped forward on command, connecting the data lock at the back of its neck to the nearest computing node. A deep hum emanated from the node’s depths, and suddenly a clear, complex holographic projection appeared in midair before Ophelia.
The projection flickered with intricate numbers and symbols, countless rapidly shifting curves. The data refreshed faster than any human mind could process, but for the Ophelia Matrix, this was just a trivial thread in her vast cognitive web.
“This sensor recorded the largest anomalous energy fluctuation to date… data incomplete, but perhaps can be supplemented by records from adjacent sensors…”
Ophelia murmured to herself, her gaze slowly scanning the shifting projections. In truth, she didn’t need to do this—the data flowed through her matrix, and she could access every piece of information in the underground base without moving this vessel. Yet she persisted.
She gave herself a good reason—someone once said: life needs a sense of ritual.
“…An extremely high magical energy peak, not originating from the Well of Deep Blue. This reading is suspicious… no man-made device from the Gondor era could produce such a peak…” Ophelia’s expression grew serious. She felt she might have grasped the key records—the shadow left by the magical tide that swept the planet seven centuries ago. “This peak can form a complete waveform with the data slice 12665… but its functional expression is strange, defying conventional geometric space… a peculiarity of the deep sea?”
Ophelia muttered. The data extracted from the ancient shallow storage center was vast, and due to the shockwave from the Well of Deep Blue’s explosion, many fragments were damaged. Sorting, repairing, and identifying parts related to the magical tide was no simple task—even for the Ophelia Matrix’s formidable computing power, it was a challenge.
Perhaps… she should consider borrowing some processing power from the neural network. But first, she’d have to solve the compatibility issue between the neural network and the ancient iron soldier network—the Cecil Empire’s neural network was not compatible with the old iron network.
A branch thread formed within the Ophelia Matrix to explore the feasibility of establishing a data interface between the iron and neural networks. Just as she shifted some attention to this problem, a brief “noise” suddenly appeared in a data slice processed by one computing node.
It was an extremely short recording, abruptly inserted between two normal sensor readings. It didn’t match the data format used by the Well of Deep Blue’s control center at the time, yet it left a deep imprint on one sensor. It looked like a brief interference signal—one of countless error fragments generated when the control system collapsed. The Ophelia Matrix marked it as “junk data” within a millisecond, but then, in the next millisecond, she removed the mark and extracted the “noise.”
She didn’t know why she suddenly spawned a thread to process this interference. It felt like intuition… But this underground facility was nothing but cold steel machines. Could steel-made computing nodes have intuition?
“…Not from the Well of Deep Blue, but also unlike those ‘anomalous signals,’” Ophelia “watched” the extracted garbled information with confusion. “Why would this be left in the system…?”
She instinctively checked the system logs corresponding to the garbled data. Fortunately, the logs were mostly intact. They showed the garbled message was automatically recorded by a sensor near the Well of Deep Blue’s basal containment ring, and the timestamp… was one hundredth of a second before the Well’s explosion.
The hum in the Ophelia Matrix suddenly paused.
One hundredth of a second before the explosion.
At that moment, all sensors were still intact, the Well of Deep Blue was operating normally, and the magical tide… theoretically hadn’t yet reached the planet.
In theory, there should have been no interference or noise in the system at that time.
In the hall, the buzzing of the calculation matrix flared up once more. The existing processing threads swiftly adjusted, allocating a portion of new computing power to synchronize. That previously unnoticed “noise” began to be processed repeatedly. The Ophelia Matrix tried every possible method to restore and recompile this seemingly forced “garbled code” embedded within the system. Finally, a faint, almost completely distorted voice emerged from the system—
“Sorry.”
…
As the midday sun shone upon the spire of the Cecil Holy Light Cathedral, twelve chimes rang out punctually, as they did every day. The clear, resonant bells shattered the quiet of the cathedral district, echoing high above the city.
In the prayer chamber, Veronica suddenly opened her eyes.
She gazed quietly at the platinum scepter resting on the altar, as if staring at a symbol frozen in the annals of history.
The melodious bells continued to reverberate outside the window, drifting through the sky.
After a long silence and steady gaze, she finally reached out gently, grasping the platinum scepter in her hand as she had countless times before.
Far away, deep within the Talash Plains, hundreds of mimicry divine nodes activated simultaneously. Layers of sacred light shimmered around Veronica, and in the next moment, the clamor of the mortal world swiftly faded from her perception. Her spirit was guided by the “bridge” to a place that seemed infinitely distant from the earthly realm. Beyond a barrier forged from holy light, sacred chants, and warmth, a magnificent city made entirely of radiant brilliance unfolded before her.
The city stretched boundlessly, its walls forged from light lined up like scales in her vision. Majestic cathedral spires and towering turrets rose, connected by roads cast from light. Clouds drifted slowly beneath these paths and towers, while sacred hymns lingered like a gentle breeze throughout the city. At its heart lay an immense, endless plaza where massive, amorphous crystals floated in midair. The crystals slowly rotated with the sacred chants, their surfaces and every edge shifting continuously in the glow.
Veronica stood silently before the crystal, the platinum scepter in her hand radiating a burning heat.
After a long pause, she finally spoke: “It was you who made the move back then, wasn’t it?”
(End of chapter)