Chapter 1047 — Victory Day

Talrond maintained its balance in the cradle, but there is no eternal balance in the world. Even short-lived humans can realize that; dragons, of course, can as well.

Only, before this final battle arrived, no one could say it aloud.

Facing the final battle like a curse with no set hour, some dragons drowned themselves in the bliss conjured by hallucinogens and enhancers; some chose to submit to fate and simply wait for it; some kept themselves sharp in full awareness, quietly making ready to meet it. But almost no dragon had truly imagined that mortals would be the victors of that battle — and yet now, victory had truly come.

"We won, so in theory we shouldn't be here at all..." Metzen suddenly realized the problem — as a high-ranking dragon living in upper Talrond, and a member of the Supreme Council, she was entitled to know more of the details of this final battle, and so now she had more questions. "But why did we wake up? Does that mean we actually... half lost?"

"No, we truly won, but something unknown happened," Noretta said, her voice low. "Omega did not completely purge the original minds of all the nodes, nor did it carry out the original 'self-cleansing' directive. In fact... it seems to have vanished from Talrond, and before it vanished it released all the nodes. That's why we woke up."

"Vanished? Omega vanished?" Metzen's eyes widened in disbelief. "How did it vanish? Do you mean the servers and computing nodes are gone? Or that the Omega system is gone?"

"The second, it seems, but I don't know the details either. I'm only responsible for searching for survivors — Elder Duke Moore and a few mechanics seem to know more, but even they are somewhat at a loss. After all... the Omega system has run on its own for many years and iterated on its own many times. It's already a system so complex that even its original designers can't understand it, and for the last few dozen millennia all the technicians could do was make more refined casings for some of Omega's computing nodes and change the decorations."

"...I can't help thinking of something Gao Yang said about Talrond. In private, he called our situation 'the Lost Holy Right'..." Metzen murmured, then slowly frowned. "Either way, Omega actually released our minds... That really doesn't fit the logic of its directives..."

"But it's a good thing, isn't it?" Noretta said, tilting her head slightly. "It let us 'live.' Though staying alive is going to be a good deal more troublesome now."

Noretta's words seemed to remind Metzen. Riding on the dragon's back, the blue dragon lady could not help turning her gaze once more to the land below, now reduced to wasteland: "Things must be very bad now? Tell me what we're facing..."

"All right, though none of it will be pleasant to hear," Noretta sighed. "Let's start with the Great Shield going dark, then the shutdown of the ecological environment and the food and medical problems that follow, and the factories stopping after Omega vanished... though we don't have many factories left to use anyway."

...

Outside the Agundor ruins, the vast complex of buildings that had once served as factories and the headquarters of the giant corporate consortium had likewise collapsed. Enormous steel structures and protective walls had been destroyed in the chaotic gravity storms and heat waves, twisted into grotesque postures crawling across the plain — yet compared with the city clusters truly reduced to rubble, this region's integrity and stability were still far greater.

This was likely thanks to the high-strength construction standards of the factory complex itself — compared with the city facilities that prized elegance and elaborate form, these vital basic factories had exceptionally sturdy structures and multiple layers of protection, and in the earlier fighting this area had not been a main battlefield.

So although the factory facilities here had gone dark and the crucial, fragile control systems had been utterly destroyed, some exceptionally sturdy factory buildings and the caves built beneath them had survived. These facilities were now the survivors' temporary haven — the scarred dragons who had lived through the final battle gathered here, dragging their weary bodies along, licking their wounds and waiting for the future.

This was the sight Metzen saw after she climbed down from Noretta's back.

Honestly, the wretched state of this place made it very hard for her to associate it with "victory."

"I know this doesn't look like a comfortable place to settle, but it's the most 'habitable' spot we could find right now," Noretta said, turning her head to look at Metzen, who was limping down from her wing, a trace of mockery in her voice. "Conditions are limited, so bear with it. Just think of the rocks here as the zero-gravity sleeping cot in your nest — not that the thing ever worked properly for more than a few days after you picked it up at the secondhand market."

"If you have the time to mock my finances from back then, you'd be better off finding somewhere to rest. Keep flying with those wounds and they'll tear open again," Metzen said, glancing back at her friend. "And speaking of finances — we're all in the same boat now anyway."

"Good, still optimistic. That sets my mind at ease," Noretta folded her wings; the wound on her back made the corner of her mouth twitch, but she shook her head. "I'll set out once more, to a combat zone in the south, and see whether I can find any of our kin who have just woken. The temperature is dropping — a dragon's constitution may be enough to keep one from freezing to death in the Arctic wind, but once wounded, the drain on stamina is immense, and the cold wind will turn wounds that might have healed into something beyond remedy."

At this, Noretta looked at the factories and cave facilities of the gathering point, scarred and battered by war: "At least there's a roof here to block the wind, and a few heat pumps still barely running."

"Then what about your wounds?" Metzen could not help asking.

"Honestly? It hurts a little, but one more flight is certainly no problem," Noretta flexed her wings. "White dragons heal fast — of that I'm quite confident."

"All right, then be careful."

"I will be — you go find Karador first, he's in charge of order at this camp," Noretta said, raising her head, her long neck pointing toward the center of the camp. "Besides him there are several red dragons there; their healing magic and repair skills can help stabilize your wounds. With Omega gone, the medical equipment and auto-repair devices are useless, so we can only rely on traditional 'craftsmanship'... though their craftsmanship isn't much to speak of either."