Chapter 145 — The Ancient Proving Ground
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
Before long, Byron led Gao Yang to the forward edge of the exploration into the Black Mountain Range ruins.
They were already near the middle layers of the ruins, the fruit of several days' unremitting labor by the team Byron commanded. This section connected to the upper levels by a great staircase, and within it lay far vaster spaces and soaring ceilings. Building such extraordinary breadth inside a mountain was no easy feat; if its builders had chosen such a scale, it could only mean that this region required space on that order.
Every corridor was raised, and so was every door and every room.
Gao Yang picked up a map and, by the light of the magic crystal Hetty held up beside him, traced the routes marked on it. Sir Byron had carried out his duty with great diligence, charting the regions along the way; countless straight corridors and rooms were clearly visible, and some of the rooms or corridor forks had been marked with special symbols to indicate unknown objects or suspicious branches within. Clearly, even after several days of exploration, Sir Byron and his company had failed to grasp just how vast this astonishing ruin truly was.
Just how insane was the scale of this thing?
By now Gao Yang, Hetty, Amber, Byron, and a large detachment of soldiers had arrived at that particular room. Byron pointed to the great door that had already been cleared and to the control mechanism: "My lord, our discovery was pure luck. This door was originally sealed shut, but the years must have worn a gap into it, and that was how we caught the draft. The control device beside it should be broken—its identification function has failed, and anyone at all can activate it."
"So even the works of the Gondor Empire can't outlast a thousand years..." Gao Yang sighed. "Show me."
Byron nodded, pulled off his glove, and stepped forward. He placed his hand on the metal device, and a distorted voice issued from it: "Detecting... sample subject... stable period... passage granted. Opening isolation door..."
Amid the creaking grind of machinery, the ancient isolation door set into the wall slowly opened.
"That's all it takes, and the door opens. Then, whether anyone passes through or not, it closes itself within five minutes—or strike this pillar twice in succession, and it closes as well. There's an identical device on the other side of the passage, too," Byron explained in detail.
Two more soldiers stepped forward, and sure enough the device emitted a similar sound, announcing that the isolation door had opened.
It seemed to identify anyone who touched the device as a so-called stable sample subject. The identity verification was pure formality.
But Gao Yang could not help frowning: those words, "sample subject," had sunk him into deep unease.
"This thing can actually talk!" Amber, by contrast, had taken an interest in the device itself. She ran over and imitated the others, placing her hand atop the metal pillar, and said with relish, "I've heard elves and wizards can make talking magic puppets too, but I've never—"
"Detecting... warning, qualification mismatch, unrecognized target, passage closing, alarm activated."
With that stiff, cold voice, the isolation door slammed shut again amid a tremendous noise, leaving a thoroughly bewildered Amber standing beside the device: "Hey... I didn't do anything!"
The instant the words "alarm activated" rang out, Gao Yang's hand had gone to the hilt of the Pioneer's Sword, but half a minute passed and no other disturbance came, so he allowed himself to relax a little: it seemed most of this facility's functions had long since ceased, and this door before them likely operated on its own, incapable of truly raising any alarm.