Chapter 583 — Vision

"Correct. The logs show that the Sentinel Tower has been operating normally throughout," Banner said, stepping aside. Behind him, a great many illusory projections were taking shape around the silvery-white alloy column, the elven script flickering across them displaying this tower's operational records for the past two or three years. "I found no alarm for the first overload—only the last one."

Suo You frowned despite herself and looked at the metal cube at the center of the room. "Sentinel, query."

The cube responded at once. "Sentinel standing by."

"Did this tower experience an overload at any point between two and four years ago?"

"Searching… no results. This tower experienced no overload during that period."

"Everything was normal during that time? No faults whatsoever?"

"This tower was entirely normal during that period. No faults occurred."

The atmosphere turned grave and silent, and the group unconsciously exchanged glances.

There was a problem with the artificial intelligence's answer.

Suo You had already arrived at a clear conclusion—the first tower to suffer an overload fault was this very Sentinel Tower in southeastern Ansul!! The fault had occurred about three years ago, before Gao Yang had risen from his coffin, and it was precisely this fault that had led to the destruction of the old Cecil territory by the aberrations that wandered out.

Yet the spirit-mind that had run continuously for seven centuries without a single shutdown claimed… that it knew nothing of this fault at all!

This Sentinel Tower had never once sent a malfunction report back to the Silver Empire's central control hub!

Gao Yang frowned and looked at Banner, lowering his voice. "Is the spirit mind itself functioning normally?"

"Everything is normal. I have checked every one of its mind nodes—no signs of tampering or self-reorganization," Banner said with a grave expression. "Under these circumstances, a sentinel could never turn traitor."

"Then the problem lies elsewhere," Gao Yang drew a deep breath. "If even the sentinels have lost full control of the towers, then we are in serious trouble."

This was one of the reasons Gao Yang had insisted on inspecting the Sentinel Towers—these towers really did have problems!

Yet as the control core of the Sentinel Tower, the High Tower's spirit mind had no malfunction records whatsoever, and that was precisely the most unsettling part.

The fault had occurred in the blind spots of the system.

"Is there anything that could block the sentinel's perception and control of the High Tower, or tamper with its records without leaving a trace?" Gao Yang looked at the only expert on site, the runemaster Banner. "If the High Tower were to overload, where would the first alarm signal be sent from?"

"In theory, no alarm signal could ever bypass the sentinel's monitoring," Banner said at once. "Its priority is the highest."

Then Suo You, Gao Yang, and Banner fell into discussion and analysis of the sentinel's operating mechanisms, trying to find latent flaws in the system. Amber, however, standing to one side, could not make head or tail of any of this technical talk, and the half-elf lady began to let her mind wander far away.

She blinked and looked all around this room steeped in soft blue light and magical energy.

Once again she seemed to be having a hallucination—

In a corner of the room, near a rune focus brimming with magical power, a black fissure abruptly surfaced in the air. Shadows crept out from the crack, breeding and quivering in the air. Amber blinked, but the shadow did not vanish at once; instead, a hazy human figure emerged from within it.

It was a figure with no facial features and no details of limb, its whole body seemingly bound by some sort of loose, sagging strips of cloth. It swayed twice amid the black fissure, leaned half its body out, and then beckoned to Amber.

Amber gave a small cry of surprise. "Eh?"

The figure raised a hand, pointed straight up, and jabbed its finger emphatically, then gradually dissolved away.

"What is it?" Gao Yang noticed Amber's distraction once more and saw that she was staring at an empty corner. He spoke at once. "What are you looking at?"

"I think I just saw someone... a shadow dweller?" Amber blinked. Fully roused, she found the fissure and the figure already gone from before her eyes. "Strange, how could a fissure be here... I couldn't even sense it..."

Then she shook her head and looked up overhead with curiosity. "Hey, hey, Auntie, is there something up there?"

"Auntie..." Suo You's expression went blank for a moment, but she still looked up along with her. "The ceiling. Beyond that is the mana cloud canopy..."

Just then, Banner suddenly came to a realization. "Wait—it is not just the mana cloud canopy! It is the stele!!"