Chapter 717: Mooching Off the Network

The mechanical voice caught Gawain off guard for a moment.

He wasn’t unfamiliar with it—he first heard it when detaching from the satellite. That synthetic voice had issued warnings and announced the activation of the escape system. Later, it occasionally played when connecting to the satellite. By now, he was certain: this voice belonged to a satellite in space—or perhaps to the entire space facility network.

He raised his hand and tentatively touched the black leather-bound book again. This time, there was no response.

Beltira couldn’t hear the voice in Gawain’s mind, but she noticed the sudden change in his expression and couldn’t help but ask, “What’s wrong?”

“This thing…” Gawain tried to hide his embarrassment, “what exactly is it for?”

Beltira reached out and took the black leather book into her hands, flipping through its pages casually in midair. “It contains countless pieces of knowledge and can display content in the reader’s preferred language… hmm?”

Under the influence of magic, the pages turned on their own, but no wondrous images appeared this time. Instead, each page was marked with a red X and a glaring red message: “Proxy access disconnected. Please verify authorization validity.”

Gawain read the words appearing on the pages and finally realized: this thing was probably… broken because of him.

“How… how could this happen?” Beltira’s rare look of shock and slight panic showed on her face. “It’s never happened in hundreds of years… it never—”

“Uh, don’t worry about its condition for now,” Gawain interrupted, his tone a bit stiff. “Tell me what this thing actually does, and where it came from. Maybe I can figure something out.”

Beltira paused, then recalled Gawain’s identity as an “Outsider Wanderer”—though she always reminded herself, every time she looked at Gawain Cecil’s face, she forgot this fact. As an Outsider Wanderer, he must have seen and known a lot, right?

“The Ultimate Book,” she began, “as I said, is an extraordinary artifact we found in this ancient ruin. It was tightly sealed within a complex device, but by the time we discovered it, the device had already been damaged by the passage of time. The book contains what seems like endless knowledge and adapts its language to the reader—when we first opened it, it was filled with indecipherable symbols, but after several attempts, it began displaying content in the common tongue.

“Its primary function is to present various knowledge based on the reader’s needs, but only about things that actually exist in the world and can be observed—like the location of a mountain or the length of a river. There’s a detail here: initially, the knowledge it could provide was limited and often contained errors or simply told the reader ‘data incomplete, update required.’ But over time, the range of things it could describe grew, as if it was learning somehow.

“Its second function is even more incredible: once certain conditions are set, it can simulate the outcomes of events—like calculating the success rate of a specific experiment. Its accuracy in this regard is terrifying. It can even predict shifts in the continent’s political landscape—for example, part of the Ansu civil war was forecasted through its simulations…”

As Beltira spoke, Gawain’s brow furrowed deeper. He had never imagined that the End of All Things Society possessed such a powerful ‘artifact.’ When he heard about the simulation function, he couldn’t help but ask, “So, does it simulate my development as well?”

“No,” Beltira shook her head, “and that’s one of the things that puzzles me. It refuses to answer any questions about Outsider Wanderers or simulate any events centered on them. The message it gives is ‘dangerous access, authorization denied.’”

Gawain’s mind raced.

It made sense that it couldn’t answer questions about Outsider Wanderers—after all, he wasn’t from this world, and almost all the ‘intel’ about Outsider Wanderers was either fabricated by himself or imagined by the Sleeper. This so-called Ultimate Book, no matter how powerful, probably couldn’t tap into the Sleeper’s mental network. But the fact that it refused to simulate anything related to Outsider Wanderers suggested some kind of active defense mechanism.

The first thing he thought of was the phrase he heard when touching the Ultimate Book: “Illegal medium detected logging into system.”

This could mean two things: either Gawain, as a traveler from another world, was the ‘illegal medium’ and thus barred from accessing the book, or the Ultimate Book itself was the ‘illegal medium’ and couldn’t access Gawain, the ‘satellite spirit.’

Moreover, Beltira’s mention of the book’s simulation function made Gawain think of the Origin Space, the virtual world created by the Sleeper—or more precisely, the simulation and calculation functions based on virtual world technology.

The Ultimate Book was unearthed by the End of All Things Society centuries ago, while the Sleeper’s mental network was only recently completed. So the book definitely wasn’t connected to the mental network. Instead, it must be linked to another super system with powerful computing capabilities capable of running simulations…

Of course, it was also possible that the simulation ability was the book’s own function, not a connection to some higher system. But considering the warning tone he heard when touching the book and how the book’s data was initially incomplete and then slowly updated like downloading from a backend, Gawain couldn’t help but think the book was just a middleman for information—it presented data pulled from elsewhere.

Beltira noticed Gawain lost in thought. Though she had many questions, she held back from speaking. The writhing vines and trembling roots in the hall betrayed her unease—Gawain noticed but deliberately ignored them.

He had reached a crucial point in his reasoning:

If the Ultimate Book was linked to another data source, that source must have these characteristics:

• It stored vast amounts of data, mainly about various things on the continent—mountains, rivers, flora and fauna distribution, mineral properties, and so on—and could probably scan the land with precision.

• It had powerful computing capabilities used for simulating events or running experiments.

• Its data was constantly updated, which explained why the Ultimate Book, dormant for so long, took a long time to update and synchronize after being activated by the End of All Things Society.

Gawain didn’t know how many things in this world fit all these criteria, but he knew at least one—the high-tech satellite cluster in the sky.

Though these were just his speculations, the more he thought about it, the more plausible it seemed. By the time he looked at the Ultimate Book again, his expression grew strange.

Damn, this thing’s probably been secretly mooching off my network all along!

He’d already crossed worlds and lived two lives, and now he was getting mooched off by a book! Who would believe that?

Knowing the Zenith Star Fleet long gone wouldn’t come back just to handle this kind of after-sales issue, Gawain smirked inwardly and resolved to have Daniel open a few more ports on the Sleeper’s mental network later…

Beltira finally couldn’t hold back and asked, “Do you… have any leads?”

Gawain snapped out of his thoughts and casually replied, then couldn’t help but glance at the Ultimate Book again. Thinking back to the voice he heard when touching it and the book’s sudden loss of function, the truth suddenly became clear:

Obviously, a long-time unauthorized user—a black IP—had suddenly been physically connected to the security system and was immediately shut down by the official system’s self-defense mechanism. No wonder it refused to simulate anything related to Outsider Wanderers—that was clearly a safety precaution!

Knocking out a mooching user was a good thing, but Gawain couldn’t help feeling a strange sense of regret:

Though the Ultimate Book was mooching off the network, it seemed to have access to more information than he, the ‘satellite spirit’…

Maybe it was due to some mysterious ancient technology, or because he could only link to one satellite while the book connected to multiple data sources. Either way, it seemed like a very useful tool—at least, Gawain himself had no data simulation or historical query functions beyond controlling satellite surveillance cameras…

His expression grew even stranger, so much so that Beltira thought the Outsider Wanderer before her was way too emotionally invested in a book. Maybe it was a unique trait of their kind, but she still couldn’t help asking again, “Are you…?”

“Nothing,” Gawain finally shook off the flood of thoughts, waving his hand awkwardly at Beltira. “Based on what I know, this book is probably a ‘fake,’ so…”

“You can tell it’s a fake?” Gawain had only said that casually to find an excuse for the book’s damage, but Beltira immediately exclaimed in surprise, “Outsider Wanderers really do possess mysterious knowledge… Indeed, it’s a fake—that’s how the book describes itself.”

Gawain hid his embarrassment and asked curiously, “Describes itself? How exactly?”

“A false key used to pry open the door to truth. This item is a fake, but if used properly, it still has great value—that’s the first sentence that appears every time the Ultimate Book is activated. Of course, now even that sentence is gone.”

Gawain: “…”

This was the first time he’d heard ‘mooching off the network’ described so poetically…

Yes, from the book’s own ‘self-description,’ he was even more certain it was mooching off the network.

He shook his head and steered the conversation back to his own pace: “Because it’s a fake, it’s far more fragile than the real thing. In fact, when you got it, it was already on the verge of collapse.”

Beltira blinked.

Gawain continued, “And the dangerous experiments you’ve been conducting here only accelerated its damage. Its refusal to simulate events related to me, the ‘Outsider Wanderer,’ was already a warning—it was telling you it was near its limit, and some functions had started to fail or become restricted.”

Beltira blinked again.

“So unfortunately, it’s completely broken from overuse, and I can’t fix it.”

This time Beltira didn’t blink. She looked at Gawain seriously for a moment before asking flatly, “Are you sure you didn’t break it?”

“…No.”

Beltira: “…Oh.”

Gawain forced a stiff smile and said slowly, “Its damage is regrettable, but as the End of All Things Society’s long-relied-upon ‘artifact,’ maybe breaking down after its service is the best fate. You said it’s useless to you now—I’ll take it as a sort of keepsake.”

Beltira’s expression stiffened slightly but she nodded, “It’s been yours since a moment ago.”

Gawain thought for a moment and casually asked, “Do you care much?”

Beltira shook her head. “No… maybe that’s just its destiny.”

…

At the same time, on the surface, the knights of Margarita, standing on alert, suddenly looked up in surprise at the massive, unmatched canopy of the giant tree.

Countless enormous leaves, each etched with faint, delicate runes, suddenly detached from the branches for reasons unknown. A breeze swept through, and vast clusters of these beautiful leaves drifted down like dancers in a graceful descent. Given the immense scale of the Great Sorin Tree, the scene of falling leaves was nothing short of breathtaking.

“Why are the leaves falling all of a sudden?” the female knight murmured to herself, a hint of surprise in her voice.

“Who knows,” Pittman muttered nearby. “Maybe it’s just getting chilly.”

(End of chapter)