Chapter 1577: Distant

As midnight approached, the faster-than-light communication signals that had been echoing among the stars once again fell silent. The massive antenna array atop the towering Thorin tree gradually powered down, leaving only the steel framework and crystalline matrices softly humming in the night breeze.

Coolant surged through fiber-optic conduits, and the high-speed servo-brain arrays in one ecological chamber after another slipped into light sleep mode. Beltira felt the neural surges within her body slowly subside. After a long moment, she turned her gaze toward the nearby arcane network terminal. “Brother Gawain, the signal from Noy has stopped transmitting.”

“You’ve done well over there,” Gawain nodded gently on the communication screen. “End the transmission for now, and check the Thorin antenna system. This is its first time running continuously for so long.”

Beltira nodded and cut the remote link to the imperial capital. On the other side, Gawain remained seated at his desk long after the communication ended. His eyes rested on the printer beside him, where a thick stack of freshly printed paper had accumulated in the tray. The pages recorded hours of conversation between two planets—first, civilization to civilization; then, person to person.

He exhaled softly and rose, moving to the large floor-to-ceiling window. It was now midnight. Outside, the night sky was a deep, inky black, sprinkled with cold starlight from the vast cosmos. The majestic Milky Way stretched across the dark mountains and the northwestern forest, its stars mingling with the artificial lights of the city below. Each point of light cut sharply into Gawain’s gaze.

Light footsteps approached. The scent of amber filled the air as Amber came to stand beside him. After a brief silence, her voice broke the quiet. “Do you think… that ‘witch’ is looking at the stars right now, too?”

“She must see far more stars than we can, brighter and more dazzling. She can look down upon the earth and see every flicker of light in every home,” Gawain said slowly. For some reason, memories stirred within him—decades spent trapped on a satellite, gazing down at the world below. In a way, he and the ‘witch’ Nova, trapped in that satellite, were alike. But unlike him, who had never truly set foot on the land beneath, the witch was stepping toward her destiny by leaving behind the home where she was born. That difference—no outsider could truly grasp it, no matter how much they imagined.

Amber smirked at his words and muttered, “Sounds like you’ve got some life experience there…”

Gawain only smiled, offering no reply. But Amber was restless. Seeing his silence, she rambled on, “They have to link a person’s brain directly to the Pathfinder satellite to maintain faster-than-light communication with Loren… I never thought they’d bypass the Pathfinder legacy’s restrictions that way.”

“I didn’t expect it either,” Gawain said after a pause, sighing softly. “But now we can explain why the messages from the Noy always seem so… human, so slightly imperfect. Because the ‘spokesperson’ among the Noy has literally ‘uploaded’ her mind into the FTL antenna. All along, we’ve been speaking directly with an open mind.”

Amber pondered this, then suddenly asked, “That ‘witch’ said she ‘felt’ kindness and warmth in the messages Loren sent to Noy, and that’s why she chose to trust us, strangers from another star. What do you think? Is it a neural illusion caused by her connection to the Pathfinder device? Or… is there really something beyond theory—something that lets her sense our emotions through the device?”

“I have no clue,” Gawain admitted. “It’s not covered by any discipline we know, and no theory supports the idea that FTL communication can transmit ‘feelings.’ But since the witch believes she sensed Loren’s goodwill across the stars… we shouldn’t disappoint her. After all…”

He paused, a smile slowly spreading across his face. “This cold, indifferent cosmos could use a little warmth and romance.”

…

From the planet’s depths, raw primordial energy surged forth, washing through every crack and crevice of the Ancestor Peak. Under the conscious control of the “Master of All Laws,” these powerful currents flowed precisely along their designated paths, connecting and resonating with the massive facilities built throughout the mountain. Fueled by this endless energy, the sacred mountain of the ancient Ogure people was gradually transforming into an unprecedentedly vast “machine,” awakening slowly across the land.

The first rays of dawn pierced the clouds, slanting across the mountain’s slopes. Endless alloy plates gleamed like armor draped over the sacred peak, shining brilliantly in the sunlight. Gigantic pipelines crisscrossed between energy stations, analysis centers, and sensor amplification arrays. Massive valves and relay pump stations cast solemn silhouettes in the morning light. Occasionally, steam hissed from pressure release valves or sublimators, drifting among the shadows to form a continuous mist above the mountain.

Within those colossal pipes flowed alchemical coolant—a vital lifeblood. Drawing energy from deep within the planet to power a machine spanning half a plain was no small feat. Keeping such an energy-hungry behemoth stable was an even greater challenge. The “vibration focus” housed a vast, complex cooling system. Its deepest pipes circled the “Observer’s Chamber,” while shallower conduits stretched from the mountain’s base to its peak. Tons of coolant surged through this network every second, extracting heat from the core observation devices and safely transferring it to heat exchange stations at the foot of the mountain, where it contributed to the city’s heating—a small, humble “reward” from the magical storm observation apparatus to the Ogure people.

Beyond the massive cooling system, the mountain’s interior—now sheathed in metallic armor—concealed a web of smaller pipelines. These carried biomass solutions infused with growing neural fibers. This vast nervous system, modeled after the Thorin tree and designed by the empire’s highest druidic institute, extended all the way to the giant ring on the plain. It ensured the observation device’s operation was stable, reliable, and synchronized. Compared to magic-field-based communication, this neural network offered irreplaceable advantages in interference resistance and fault detection.

Early spring’s chill still lingered in the morning breeze, but several figures had already reached the summit of the sacred mountain. Chief Kamira stood on a platform near the arcane network hub tower, gazing out at the view. Steel, crystal, and pipes sprawled beneath her feet. The once-familiar pilgrim paths, forests, and springs were now buried beneath heavy industrial armor. On the plain below, the massive sensor array ring was taking shape. Towers rose in the hazy dawn, and construction sites stretched in clusters near the ring’s connecting framework.

After a long moment, Kamira withdrew her gaze and shook her head with a sigh. “It’s nothing like I remember.”

“I told you the mountain’s changed, but you kept putting off coming to see it. Always busy with ‘official duties’—do you really strike me as that diligent?” Wenna Whitebloom’s voice came from beside Kamira, the gray elf matriarch sounding a bit annoyed. “The summit was ‘topped out’ last month. All the energy sources are now covered by containment wells and control valves. We’ve been up here several times already.”

“I just… get a little nervous,” Kamira glanced down at her childhood friend. “You know how sensitive we orcs are about this. I wasn’t sure I could face the mountain as it is now…”

“And now that you have, what do you think?” A tiny voice suddenly chimed in, accompanied by the rapid buzzing of wings. Fairy Queen Stella hovered beside Kamira’s head, fluttering her wings. “Do you regret the decision we made together back then?”

Kamira turned to look at the little sprite. Stella’s people had once lived on the sacred mountain, ruling the land for centuries before relocating to a valley near Sainthelm City. By all rights, the fairies should have the strongest claim to the mountain, yet these optimistic little beings seemed unfazed.

“Of course not. Orc culture has no concept of regret. The path always moves forward,” Kamira shook her head. “I don’t feel sorrow either. In fact, looking at this miraculous sight, I feel… proud. We, mere mortals, have built something here that even the gods would marvel at. But what about you, Stella? Don’t you and your people feel any regret? After all, this was your home…”

“No regrets,” Stella laughed, fluttering up and down. “The sacred mountain hasn’t disappeared—it’s right beneath our feet. It’s just wearing new clothes. We’ve already agreed that once the magical storm passes, the fairies will move back. We don’t need much space. We can build a vibrant garden among the steel.”

Stella blinked, imagining a group of fairies living amid giant machines, building gardens in the gaps between factories and pipelines, all while studying machinery and arcane technology. Orcs’ limited imagination couldn’t quite picture it, but one thing was certain—that wouldn’t be the “little friends” she remembered.

“You really do keep surprising me,” said Wickliff, standing on a nearby boulder. The human king shook his head with a smile. He pulled out a pipe, packed it carefully with tobacco, and struck a flame with his steel prosthetic. Bringing the pipe to his lips, his gaze drifted toward a platform far off on the summit.

It was an elevator platform, but the shaft leading deep into the mountain was currently sealed. Heavy steel gates locked away secrets, while the howling mountain wind swept through the elevator’s iron framework.

Wycliffe clenched his pipe between his teeth, the tobacco gleaming faintly in the biting early spring wind. As tendrils of smoke curled upward, he sighed softly, “It’s hard to believe—a former god is right beneath us, separated only by a shaft, some dirt, rock, and steel plates.”

His quiet musing drew a few nods of agreement from his companions nearby. Then, barely two or three seconds after the human king’s words faded, the air before them suddenly flickered with bright arcane sparks. Pure magic danced in the atmosphere, tracing out a line of glowing text:

“Yes, I’m right under your feet—so could you please not scatter ash everywhere?”

Wycliffe: “…”

Before he could respond, the ever-silent Spirit Shaman King, Stoor, reached over and snuffed out Wycliffe’s pipe with a firm press. “Don’t think you can smoke in the factory just because you’re a king.”

…

Watching the commotion above, Myrmina couldn’t help but smile quietly from within the observer’s chamber.

She had been working in this cavern for half a year now. And as the magical tide steadily approached the Noyan homeworld, the day when the observation instruments would officially come online was drawing near.

Over the past six months, through her ever-present magical sight, she had witnessed a cascade of transformations across this land. The ancient sacred mountain, under her watchful gaze, was gradually being reshaped into a colossal steel behemoth. The vast ancestral plains were steadily filled with sprawling construction sites, factories, and pipelines. The population gathered here had reached a delicate balance—nearly every day, new engineering teams and expert groups arrived at the rally point in Saint Helm City, transported by flying machines or arcane-powered trains. At the same time, personnel who had completed their missions or were rotating out departed. The Loren people were racing against time; all mortal efforts on this planet were now focused on a single goal, driving earth-shattering change.

Yet, while the ancestral plains were being utterly transformed, the starry sky above remained unchanged, as always.

Myrmina shifted her perception and linked to a sensory node located north of the sacred mountain, which had already been calibrated and was now in trial operation. Through the node’s “eye,” she quietly gazed upward.

Though it was daytime, she could still clearly sense the presence of those distant stars.

The sensor array was not yet complete, so she couldn’t precisely discern the subtle disturbances among the stars. But faintly, she could “hear” them—the soft cosmic chorus of countless stars singing across the universe. She could hear the voice of “Ao,” distant yet profound. She could also hear the “Sun,” the gas giant revered by the Loren as the source of light and heat, its steady waves resonating in harmony with “Ao.”

For some reason, Myrmina suddenly thought of that civilization four light-years away.

Unlike Loren, the Noyan homeworld did not have a gentle gas giant like the “Sun” nearby. Their planet orbited directly around a single star, whose immense energy shaped the majestic mountains and lush ecosystems of Noyan lands. Their sunrises were entirely different from Loren’s—they did not see a vast, blazing disk filling the sky. Their sun was no larger than a coin’s diameter when it rose, never covering even a quarter of the sky…

Myrmina imagined the alien landscapes of that distant world and felt a renewed excitement for the journey she had planned.

(End of chapter)