Chapter 466 — The Restarted Laboratory

They passed through the fortress's outer galleries and through the fan-shaped hall where nine hundred and seventy-two bodies had once been laid out.

The bodies in the fan-shaped hall had all been carried out and properly buried in the cemetery outside Xuanyao City. Now the hall was utterly empty, with only rows of seats silently keeping their peace in the dim light. As Kamael passed through the fan-shaped hall, he could not help but slow his steps; he looked at the place that had once trapped him for a thousand years, but in the end said nothing, and instead walked straight to the end of the hall and opened the passage to the highest-security laboratory.

Gao Yang was led into a room he had never seen before.

This room stood just outside the fan-shaped hall; judging by its position, it must have been close to the great gate leading to the resting place of Amorn, the Giant Deer. Gao Yang saw that the laboratory had been thoroughly cleaned and refitted: the rectangular room was brightly lit, furnished with thaumaturgical workbenches and various rune-based experimental apparatus, and at the far end stood a massive floor-to-ceiling window.

A faint veil of light shimmered across the surface of that window, and beyond the veil lay a boundless, dim space. Within that gloom one could vaguely make out countless shattered boulders and fragments of land floating adrift, and at the very center of it all rested the corpse of the Giant Deer, huge as a hill. The soft, faint radiance it gave off lit up the many metal shards and small floating rocks around it—a sight of extraordinary beauty, and of extraordinary strangeness besides.

Through the window, Wright gazed at the body of Amorn the Giant Deer. Though he had long known of the fall of the God of Nature, and had himself renounced his faith in the God of Holy Light, at this moment he could not help being stirred by that holy and colossal divine form.

Gao Yang stepped up and clapped him on the shoulder. "Don't stare—what we're doing today is an act of defiance."

Kamael came to the center of the laboratory, where a circular platform had been installed—one of the few pieces of ancient equipment left preserved in the whole room. Standing before it, he spread both hands and channeled pure arcane energy into the metal pillars flanking the platform. With a sudden deep humming, the ancient archmage murmured to himself:

"Project Defiance, experiment... continue."

The deep hum gradually settled into a smooth, steady tone. Beyond the window, a denser, more distinct energy barrier materialized out of thin air and slowly spread to shroud the entire Fortress of Defiance, while from the speakers set in the laboratory ceiling came a mechanical, monotonous, faintly distorted synthetic voice:

"...Secondary energy system engaged. Operator authentication confirmed...

"...Activating active defense barrier... activating passive defense barrier... activating divine-power filter... activating resonance warning system...

"...Testing emergency fail-safe system... emergency fail-safe system nominal...

"Critical warning: fortress primary artificial intelligence offline... backup artificial intelligence offline... databases at all levels offline, networks at all levels offline..."

"Ignore," Kamael said quietly.

"Ignoring error messages. Auxiliary authority transferred to basic response unit. Ninety-nine percent of operators detected missing... Ignore. Operator authentication restrictions lifted. Full-function self-diagnosis of basic response unit complete. Response unit online.

"Good day, Director Kamael Slein of the Think Tank. I wish you a pleasant day's work."

Though he knew the one speaking now was merely a basic response unit without the capacity for thought, its patterns fixed a thousand years ago, Kamael in that instant drifted back to the past, and seemed to see the laboratory bustling, people coming and going without cease. He felt the arcane energy within him trembling, and only after a long while did he say softly, "Good day, Defiers... let us begin."